Litquake

Litquake is San Francisco's annual literary festival. Originally starting out as Litstock for a single day in the spring of 1999, it ran for two years under the same name before going dark in 2001 after the dot com collapse threw organizer's intentions to stage a third into disarray. It re-emerged in 2002 with a new name, determined to make the most of the fact that according to USA Today, San Francisco has the highest per capita consumption of both alcohol and books. Consisting of readings, discussions, and themed events held at different Bay Area venues, the annual festival features predominantly Bay Area authors but opens a limited number of slots for those from the outside, and kicks off during either the first or second weekend of October, depending on the year. The Litquake event has now expanded to Silicon Valley, boasting three consecutive years of the successful event at the JCC in Palo Alto.

Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are the co-founders and operate the festival as Executive Director and Artistic Director. Jen Sirganian is festival coordinator.

The first year under the Litquake name was 2002 and featured over 60 authors at four venues. The 2003 festival featured 100 authors who participated over four days. By 2004, the event had grown to 175 authors and nine days. The nine-day 2005 festival included 250 Bay Area participating authors and 6,975 attendees. The 2006 festival hit the 7833 attendee mark and included over 300 authors as well as Litquake's first ever movie, the cartoon Best Book Ever.

2011's festival saw a total attendance of 16,581, a 23% increase over 2010. 2014's attendance of 17, 215 brought the festival's total attendance since inception to 132,000.

In 2007 venues were expanded for the first time to include locations outside of San Francisco. Opening night honored Armistead Maupin with the introduction of the Barbary Coast Award. The evening starred Amy Tan, who surprised the audience by first appearing in kitschy Chinese peasant garb, only to re-emerge in an ensemble of black leather and a whip, Andrew Sean Greer's eloquent memory/narrative of his first introduction to Tales of the City, Father Guido Sarducci's mysteriously hilarious treatise on the effects of an over-abundance of lemons in an Italian village, K. M. Soehnlein's rediscovery of a fantasia on Jackie Kennedy written by Maupin in 1980, Susie Bright, cast members of Beach Blanket Babylon, Jon Ginoli, actress Laura Linney, Pamela Ling and Judd Winick, Michelle Tea, as well as the late Ethel Merman singing When the Lights Go Down in the City, by Journey. Other notable participating Bay Area writers over the course of the 8 day festival included Kim Addonizio, Kate Braverman, Colby Buzzell, Vikram Chandra, Dave Eggers, Daniel Handler, Wesley Stace, Derek Kirk Kim, Noah Levine, Mark Morford, Peggy Orenstein, Ann Patchett, Ishmael Reed, Lolly Winston, Jane Smiley, George Smoot, Gary Amdahl, Tamim Ansary, Tom Barbash, Frank Portman, and approximately 330 others.

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