100 episodes

Litquake is San Francisco's nine-day literary festival for booklovers, complete with cutting-edge panel discussions, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings. Litquake's Lit Cast is our selection of live recordings from the "Epicenter", a monthly series which embraces a theater of ideas between writers and readers.

Litquake's Lit Cast Litquake

    • Arts
    • 4.9 • 14 Ratings

Litquake is San Francisco's nine-day literary festival for booklovers, complete with cutting-edge panel discussions, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings. Litquake's Lit Cast is our selection of live recordings from the "Epicenter", a monthly series which embraces a theater of ideas between writers and readers.

    Straight, No Chaser: Writers at the Bar: Lit Cast Live Episode 139

    Straight, No Chaser: Writers at the Bar: Lit Cast Live Episode 139

    Famed bohemian saloon Vesuvio Café welcomes Litquake for an edgy and hilarious North Beach reading celebrating 2020 authors (who didn’t get to have any damn fun). Featuring Vanessa Hua, A.H. Kim, Roberto Lovato, Caitlin Myer, and Maggie Tokuda-Hall. Hosted by Alia Volz. A rare opportunity to glimpse authors performing new work in their natural habitat. Held outdoors in Kerouac Alley.

    • 1 hr 28 min
    Word Jazz: Lit Cast Live Episode 138

    Word Jazz: Lit Cast Live Episode 138

    Sponsored by Yerba Buena Community Benefit District
    Co-presented by Healdsburg Jazz Festival and Poets & Writers
    In the great tradition of San Francisco jazz and spoken-word basement readings first forged by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, and Bob Kaufman, Litquake is proud to bring back this festival favorite, showcasing world-class poets accompanied by improvised music created on the spot. With Genny Lim, devorah major, Paul S. Flores, and Brontez Purnell. Music by the Marcus Shelby Trio.

    • 1 hr 52 min
    Raceless: Georgina Lawton in conversation with Jess Cole: Lit Cast Live Episode 137

    Raceless: Georgina Lawton in conversation with Jess Cole: Lit Cast Live Episode 137

    Co-presented with MOAD. From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black.

    Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.

    • 1 hr 1 min
    Funeral Diva: Pamela Sneed with Tommy Pico: Lit Cast Live Episode 136

    Funeral Diva: Pamela Sneed with Tommy Pico: Lit Cast Live Episode 136

    This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming.

    Co-presented by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

    “This notable achievement...is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life." —Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: A Lyric

    In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed Brooklyn-based poet/performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva (City Lights) captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed's poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. Sneed discusses and reads from her work, alongside poet and Literary Hub editor Tommy Pico. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation


    Buy the authors' books:
    Pamela Sneed -- http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100510140&fa=description
    Tommy Pico -- https://bookshop.org/a/11096/9781947793576
    Browse Litquake's bookstore here -- https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

    • 1 hr 6 min
    Good Things in Small Packages: Lit Cast Live Episode 135

    Good Things in Small Packages: Lit Cast Live Episode 135

    Co-presented by The Ruby and Left Margin Lit

    The best short stories evoke a whole world in a small space. But how do they get written? Join Litquake as we hear five writers (and readers) of short stories discuss their different approaches to writing the form. They'll discuss their own methods, philosophies, and techniques behind telling stories with economy and heart. With Yalitza Ferreras, Rachel Khong, Mimi Lok, Shruti Swamy, and C Pam Zhang. Remember to subscribe to Lit Cast to be notified the minute we release our episodes -- and subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch all of our archived readings and discussions from our 2020 Litquake festival.
    Follow us on social media @litquake. 

    Buy the authors' books at Litquake's bookstore here -- https://bookshop.org/shop/litquake

    • 1 hr 18 min
    Hurricane Season: Fernanda Melchor with Yuri Herrera: Lit Cast Live Episode 134

    Hurricane Season: Fernanda Melchor with Yuri Herrera: Lit Cast Live Episode 134

    This event is now available to watch on our YouTube page, along with the rest of our 2020 festival programming.

    “Melchor’s English-language debut is a furious vortex of voices that swirl around a murder in a provincial Mexican town. Forceful, frenzied, violent, and uncompromising, Melchor’s depiction of a town ogling its own destruction is a powder keg that ignites on the first page and sustains its intense, explosive heat until its final sentence.” —Publishers Weekly

    One of Mexico’s most promising and prominent writers, Fernanda Melchor has created, in her debut novel Hurricane Season, a Gulf Coast noir drawing comparisons to everyone from Faulkner to Bolaño and Marlon James. NPR has called Hurricane Season "a mix of drugs, sex, mythology, small-town desperation, poverty, and superstition." The Los Angeles Review of Books describes  it as "a novel that sinks like lead to the bottom of the soul and remains there, its images full of color, its characters alive and raging against their fate.” Beginning with the discovery of a corpse, by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals, a Mexican village is propelled into an investigation of how and why the murder occurred. Join Fernanda Melchor as she reads from and discusses her work, with novelist and professor Yuri Herrera, author of several works including the recent nonfiction book A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire. FREE, $5-10 suggested donation

    • 1 hr 2 min

Customer Reviews

4.9 out of 5
14 Ratings

14 Ratings

lmcsf ,

Great Interviews with Writers

These are great interviews with a variety of writers in an intimate setting. Audience interaction is a plus!

alexandradoggylover ,

Worthwhile

I really enjoy listening to these. Sometimes the quality of the recording isn't great, but I still can't turn it off. Thanks.

mmcbook ,

Treasure

So glad to discover these rich conversations with authors on podcast. Thank you, Litquake (and your donors), for sharing.

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