Litquake 2026

FREE

Co-presented with Book Club of California

Californians tend to think and talk a lot about food—not just who has the best farmers’ markets or where to find the latest Instagram-famous pastry, but also about how the ways we grow, harvest, distribute, and consume food can best serve goals related to climate, social justice, and collective well-being. In his new book, North Stars of Emancipation: California’s Diverse Food and Farming Movements, researcher and activist Antonio Roman-Alcalá finds guidance on all these questions in our state’s grassroots food movements, and in the vision of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people who are leading the way. Joining Roman-Alcalá in conversation is one of those leaders, Sara Calvosa Olson, author of Chími Nu’am: Native Californian Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen. Member/guest reception at 5:30pm.

$10 / FREE for GLBT Historical Society Members

Co-presented with Bay Area Reporter and GLBT Historical Society

What are the rules of engagement when telling historical tales about the lives of LGBTQ characters? Authors and scholars compare notes on their fictional and nonfiction works that resonate realistically, and even those that are completely fantastical yet set in the real world’s past. Featuring authors Mark Abramson, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Joey Cain, and Katie Gilmartin. Moderated by Bay Area Reporter arts editor and author Jim Provenzano. Doors at 5:30pm.

FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation


Sponsored by Norway House
Part of Words Around the World 


From International Booker Prize– and National Book Award–nominated author Vigdis Hjorth comes her latest novel finally translated into English, Repetition. As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange. It was the year she first got drunk, the year she first had sex with a boy. She was watched like a hawk by an anxious mother and a silent, distant father. It was a year of typical teenage fixation and typical teenage frivolity, and of all the usual parental fretting. Until something else took hold, and her family made an unspoken decision and a terrible sacrifice. Only now, decades later, can these events come close to being comprehended. In conversation with Britta Stromeyer. 

$30 Book Society Members / $45 General Public

Sponsored by Chronicle Books
Media sponsorship by Berkeleyside
Co-presented with Book Society

With books like Season and The Flavor Equation, award-winning cookbook author and America's Test Kitchen Editor in Residence Nik Sharma has earned a reputation for blending storytelling and science with recipes that are seasonal, reliable, and delicious. In his fourth cookbook, Fundamentals of Flavor: 100 Recipes for the Science of Better Cooking, this former molecular biologist shows home cooks how four elements—fire, earth, air, and water—shape the way we cook and taste. In conversation with food writer Soleil Ho, Sharma will lead an interactive evening in the spirit of a test kitchen: an intimate conversation with tastings of recipes from the book. Doors at 6:00pm. Ticket includes tastings and wine or a non-alcoholic beverage. $10 of each ticket supports Litquake.

FREE

Co-presented with City Lights


In the months after his mother Barbara’s death, author and essayist Ben Ehrenreich set himself the task of writing a story every day. Leaving open the question of what a “story” might be, some entries ended up fable-like tales involving animals doing surprising things. Others were closer to journal entries, many of them about his daughter, who was nearly three at the time, and who was trying to understand death herself at the same time that she was voraciously exploring the living world. This deeply moving collection of those daily journeys into storytelling—a finely crafted combination of fiction, memoir, and poetic prose—is both profound and satisfyingly whimsical. In conversation with Daniel Gumbiner.

$20 adv / $25 door


The Bay Area’s long-running Porchlight storytelling series returns to Litquake for this special cinematic edition, featuring tales of the silver screen from the Bay’s finest writers and comedians including Jack Boulware, Mukethe Kawinzi, Ali Liebegott, Allison Mick, TK Moyer, and sam sax. Co-hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. Music by Marc Capelle. Doors at 7:00pm.

FREE, $10-15 suggested donation


Co-presented with The Stud

In celebration of Hieu Minh Nguyen's third poetry collection, Staying Still, join Litquake and The Stud for a night of readings and drag performances that highlight the power and resonance of stillness. Featuring drag from Pam, Hera Wynn, Mary Vice, and Hands. Readings from Brittany Newell, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Brontez Purnell, and Garrett Schlichte. Hosted by curator Micheal Foulk and Hands. Doors at 7:00 PM. 

$15 / $3 early bird discount until October 18th (code: earlybird16)
$35 for presale signed book (ticket not included)

From the bestselling author of literary sensation The Art of Fielding comes an urgent, deeply felt story of friendship, art, love, and grief, following two young women on the brink of irrevocable change. Parties and weddings, messy hookups and marred friendships, art and love and grief—The Brightness follows the electric, chaotic, everything-can-happen lives of Pella and her best friend, Irma, as they fumble their way out of sleepy, Midwestern Westish College and into a larger world that will upend their connection and everything they thought they understood about their own place within it. In stunning scenes and spectacular characters—each drawn with an almost superhuman vividness and humanity—Chad Harbach captures that specific, shimmering anxiety of your twenties when life still feels wide open, even as hard and irreversible choices start closing in. In conversation with novelist Eirinie Carson. Doors at 7:30pm.

Order a signed copy of The Brightness here (note: does not include general admission ticket).