Litquake

More Litquake highlights!

Thursday night’s Steampunk event drew nearly 100 people into a screening room that held 76, and went for three hours, including a spirited Q&A session with authors. Highlights included Richard Bottoms, who spoke on the meaning and definition of Steampunk, Joe Lansdale’s hilarious Steampunk-in-the-Old West story, the dryly sardonic Rudy ...

Still more Litquake wrap-up, monkeys drinking wine, horrible writing advice

Over 200 people crowded into Project Artaud last night, for Litquake’s “Off Book” collaboration with ODC/Dance. Authors Tess Uriza Holthe, Michelle Tea, and Alejandro Murguia read original stories and poems, sharing the stage with choreographed dance pieces. Afterwards, everyone settled in for glasses of wine and a Q&A with the ...

Last-ever Progressive Reading, bookstores packed, Lit Crawl tips, Mad Men typefaces, prison reading habits

An estimated 150 souls crowded into the Make-Out Room last night, for the last-ever edition of the Progressive Reading Series. Host Stephen Elliott announced that maybe they would start up again for the election in 2010, “after Obama is president,” to huge cheers. Standouts in the lineup were definitely Justin ...

Litquake’s mid-week recap, Leslie Chang, Raj Patel by phone, women and champagne

Litquake presented our second Barbary Coast Award to Tobias Wolff last night at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in a stellar tribute that ranks as one of the most emotionally profound yet irreverent shows the festival has ever put together. Word for Word theater group started the night with a wonderful ...

Litquake keeps on rolling, Bram Stoker back from the dead, books cure obesity?

Highlights from yesterday’s events: the Literary Death Match again drew a full crowd at the Rickshaw Stop, as novelist Eric Puchner clawed his way to a victory medal, and “intangibles” judge Daniel Handler, for some reason, provided quotations from Virgil’s The Aeneid. Both Foundation Center panel discussions on how to ...

Litquake launches!

The festival kicked off this year with an astonishing opening-night Porchlight Storytelling bash on Friday. Over 900 people packed into the Herbst Theatre to hear authors spin their hilarious and harrowing tales of poor judgment, accompanied by the best damn band in San Francisco, Marc Capelle and the Casuals featuring ...

Tobias Wolff tribute, One City One Book, the art of book blurbs

For more than three decades, Tobias Wolff has honed the craft of making sublime art out of the short-story form. —San Francisco Chronicle Wolff's voice is unfailingly authentic, while his embrace of the variety of American experience is knowing, forgiving and all-encompassing. —New York Times Book Review Wolff reminds us again and ...

Bucky Sinister, Danielle Steel, killer pigs, Sarah Palin poetry

Being in my 20s, I was looking to shock people. Now I've come to be at peace with myself more and I don't just want to freak someone out. – Poet Bucky Sinister in this week's Bay Guardian, on the publication of his new book, Get Up: A 12-Step Guide ...

Tulathimutte, Tony

Tony Tulathimutte won a 2008 O. Henry Award for his short story "Scenes from the Life of the Only Girl in Water Shield, Alaska," which was misprinted in the prize anthology (long story, heinous, not his fault), so read the corrected version free at http://www.randomhouse.com/anchor/ohenry/tulathimutte.html.

Dave Eggers, JT LeRoy, Don DeLillo blogs The Onion?

Books, inherently, require faith. Faith in an author that he or she will reward the many hours you'll spend in those pages, faith that a good story will be told, a lesson will be learned, a light will be shone upon a dim corner of the world. If you're reading ...