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Saturday, September 12
 

12:00pm PDT

San Francisco Moby-Dick Marathon 2026
Saturday September 12, 2026 12:00pm - Sunday September 13, 2026 12:00pm PDT
San Francisco Maritime Museum
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FREE

Co-presented with the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

This nonstop, cover-to-cover reading transforms the San Francisco Maritime Museum into the setting for one of the city's most beloved literary traditions! Steeped in maritime history, theatrical creativity, and community participation, the Moby-Dick Marathon brings Melville's monumental novel to life in a way that is lively, accessible, and, dare we say, fun. Literary thrill-seekers gather annually to celebrate this complicated, provocative, much-beloved-and-sometimes-dreaded epic of nautical life! Volunteer readers of all backgrounds, from special guest performers to members of the public, lend their voices to the story chapter by chapter. This year's MD24 blends San Francisco's creative spirit with live performance, visual art, spectacle, and surprise, creating an unforgettable celebration of one of America's greatest novels. Come for a chapter, stay for the night, or experience the full 24 hours inside the spectacularly restored Art Deco landmark that is the Maritime Museum!
Saturday September 12, 2026 12:00pm - Sunday September 13, 2026 12:00pm PDT
San Francisco Maritime Museum 900 Beach St, San Francisco
  Fiction, FREE
 
Wednesday, September 23
 

7:00pm PDT

R.F. Kuang: Taipei Story (SOLD OUT)
Wednesday September 23, 2026 7:00pm - 9:30pm PDT
Calvary Presbyterian
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This event has been sold out—thanks, everyone for your overwhelming interest and excitement!

$48 with book / $62 household with book / $15 student (non-bundled)

Co-presented with Green Apple Books

Join us for an evening with award-winning author R.F. Kuang for the release of her latest novel, Taipei Story. Kuang’s most personal novel to date relates the story of Lily, a first-year college student whose summer trip to Taipei, intended to connect her with her roots, is disastrous in some ways but transformative in so many more. Doors at 6:00pm.
Moderators
avatar for Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is not a scientist, but she does have a lot of questions. She grew up going to the Lawrence Hall of Science, the La Brea Tar Pits, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Steinhart Aquarium, and the Los Angeles and Oakland Zoos. Once, when she was 12, she even got to vi... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for R.F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface, and Katabasis. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where... Read More →
Wednesday September 23, 2026 7:00pm - 9:30pm PDT
Calvary Presbyterian 2515 Fillmore Ave, San Francisco
  Fiction
 
Tuesday, October 6
 

7:30pm PDT

An Evening with Ayad Akhtar
Tuesday October 6, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
Sydney Goldstein Theater
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$53 with code LITQUAKE5

Co-presented with City Arts & Lectures

A mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and an investigation in Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtar’s most daring work yet—a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture—"bordering at times on the ineffable" (Mary Gaitskill).

When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is caught between revelation and madness as an uncanny pull toward a brilliant campus colleague ensnares him in a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator’s accident—both the violence and its aftermath. In conversation with Karen Russell. Doors at 7:00pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Karen Russell

Karen Russell

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Swamplandia!, one of the NYT’s ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel, The Antidote, was the winner of the 2026 Pacific Northwest Book Awards and a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award and the 2026 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the grateful recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the NYPL’s Young Lions Award, the Bard Fiction... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Akhtar... Read More →
Tuesday October 6, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
Sydney Goldstein Theater 275 Hayes St, San Francisco
  Fiction
 
Friday, October 9
 

7:00pm PDT

Hernan Diaz: Ply
Friday October 9, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
BATS Improv Theatre
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$15 gen admission / $40 with signed book

Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation...After rewriting America’s past with his two previous novels, Pulitzer Prize winner Hernan Diaz defies expectations with his third and turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love. In conversation with Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer and friend Ed Yong. Doors at 6:30pm.
Moderators
avatar for Ed Yong

Ed Yong

Ed Yong is the author of two prize-winning New York Times bestsellers, An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes. He won a Pulitzer Prize among other awards for his coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has been a TED speaker, a Best American Science and Nature editor, and a Gugg... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Hernan Diaz

Hernan Diaz

Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of four books published in thirty-seven languages. He is the recipient of the John Updike award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, given to “a writer whose contributions to American liter... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
BATS Improv Theatre
  Fiction
 
Saturday, October 10
 

7:00pm PDT

Min Jin Lee: American Hagwon
Saturday October 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Calvary Presbyterian
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$15 gen admission / $45 with signed book

Co-presented with Kearny Street Workshop

The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic. In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little. In conversation with Andrew Sean Greer. Doors at 6:00pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of eight works of fiction, including the bestsellers Less and its companion Less Is Lost. He lives in San Francisco and Venice, Italy. His latest novel is Villa Coco.
Speakers
avatar for Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels American Hagwon, Free Food for Millionaires, and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times “100 Best Books of the Century.” She serves as the New York State Author Laureate from 2025 through 2027. She is the 2024 recipient of The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Lee has received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, a... Read More →
Saturday October 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Calvary Presbyterian 2515 Fillmore Ave, San Francisco
  Fiction
 
Sunday, October 11
 

3:00pm PDT

Natalie Baszile: Friends and Family
Sunday October 11, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch, Koret Auditorium
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FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Co-presented with SFPL

From the author of Queen Sugar comes a piercing examination of friendship and loyalty set in a tight-knit enclave in the Bay Area as two best friends find themselves at odds over their beliefs on race, identity, and allyship, especially when it comes to their teenage children. Babs and Nora have spent a decade’s worth of morning walks sharing family secrets, local drama, and advice—everything from tips on lingerie choices to Babs’s suggestions to Nora, a white woman, on how to raise Nathan, her adopted Black son. But their worlds are turned upside down when the cops are called on their kids, leading to a traumatic police encounter for Nathan. Torn between respecting Nora’s boundaries and embodying the values so important to her own family, Babs will make a choice that will shape their lives forever. In conversation with filmmaker and Jingletown Films’ founder Cheryl Dunye. Doors at 2:30pm. 
Moderators
avatar for Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American filmmaker, director, and producer based in Oakland whose work explores Black queer identity, history, and cultural memory. Her narratives are peppered with deconstructive elements such as characters addressing the camera and making ironic references to the... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Natalie Baszile

Natalie Baszile

Natalie Baszile is a writer and filmmaker. Her new novel is Friends and Family. Her previous novel, Queen Sugar, was adapted for seven television seasons by Ava DuVernay and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Her non-fiction work includes We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African... Read More →
Sunday October 11, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch, Koret Auditorium 100 Larkin St, San Francisco
  Fiction, FREE
 
Tuesday, October 13
 

7:30pm PDT

While you were novel-ing, I studied the blade: A Celebration of the Short Story
Tuesday October 13, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
American Bookbinders Museum
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Pay-what-you-can for guaranteed seat; FREE to walk-ups (space depending)

Co-presented with American Bookbinders Museum

A notoriously precise and difficult form, the short story occupies an odd place in arts & letters in 2026. Left mostly by the wayside by the publishing industry at large, the story still holds a prominent place in our biggest magazines and workshop culture. Local purveyors of the craft Rucy Cui, Cristina Fríes, and William Lohier read from their celebrated work and discuss the form's place in today's publishing/reading culture. Moderated by Litquake Artistic Director Graham Todd. Doors at 7:00pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Graham Todd

Graham Todd

Graham Todd is a fiction writer and the Artistic Director of Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival. He studied literature and religion at Stanford and received his MFA from Bowling Green. His writing has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Southampton Review, Notre Dame Review, Epiphany... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Rucy Cui

Rucy Cui

Rucy Cui is a writer from San Jose, California, who has also called Texas, Wyoming, and the south of France home. Her stories appear in The Georgia Review and other publications, where they’ve been recognized with the Barry Hannah Prize and the Bennington Fiction Prize. Her nonfiction appears in Lonely Planet. A 2024–26 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she has received support from Hedgebrook, Monson Arts, Ucross Fo... Read More →
avatar for Cristina Fríes

Cristina Fríes

Cristina Fríes is a Colombian-American fiction writer based in San Francisco, CA. Her work engages with the literary “unreal,” including magical realism, surrealism, fabulism, horror, and the gothic, often exploring women’s experiences and feminist themes. She has written a... Read More →
avatar for William Lohier

William Lohier

William Lohier is a PhD Student at Berkeley from Brooklyn, New York. His short story collection, Black Star Line, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in March 2027.
Tuesday October 13, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT
American Bookbinders Museum 355 Clementina St, San Francisco
  Fiction, Pay What You Can
 
Thursday, October 15
 

6:30pm PDT

Helene Wecker: The Gates of Midnight
Thursday October 15, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
JCC East Bay Community Campus
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FREE

Co-presented with JCC East Bay

Join us for an evening with Helene Wecker, author of the bestselling The Golem and the Jinni trilogy, reading from long-awaited The Gates of Midnight.  Wecker will discuss the trilogy, the joys and challenges of writing historical fantasy, and what it feels like to finish a writing project twenty years in the making. Doors at 6:00pm.
Speakers
avatar for Helene Wecker

Helene Wecker

Helene Wecker is the author of the historical fantasy novels The Golem and the Jinni, The Hidden Palace, and The Gates of Midnight. Her books have won awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, the VCU Cabell Award for First Novel, a National Jewish Book Award, and a Golden Poppy Award, and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her work has appeared in literary journals such... Read More →
Thursday October 15, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
JCC East Bay Community Campus 5957 Chabot Rd, Oakland, CA94618
  Fiction
 
Wednesday, October 21
 

6:00pm PDT

Nafissa Thompson-Spires: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation


Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora


From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel. We find ourselves in 1920s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. On the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford is an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with only his women to mourn him, but a question remains: Who killed him, and why? Top suspects are his four “wives,” but as their stories burst to light, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes. In conversation with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Doors at 5:30pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On the Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese’s Book Club Pick. The Revisioners won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from ­­­­­­the University... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora 685 Mission St, San Francisco
  Fiction, FREE
 
Thursday, October 22
 

8:15pm PDT

Chad Harbach: The Brightness
Thursday October 22, 2026 8:15pm - 9:45pm PDT
The Lost Church
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$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). 
Moderators
avatar for Eirinie Carson

Eirinie Carson

Eirinie Carson is an award-winning Black British writer living in California. She writes about sexual taboos, death and dying, illegal substances, hauntings both real and imagined, and ancestral inheritance in a world desperate to sever the connections between what came before and... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Chad Harbach

Chad Harbach

Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and studied at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder of n+1 and the author of the bestselling The Art of Fielding, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. 
Thursday October 22, 2026 8:15pm - 9:45pm PDT
The Lost Church 988 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Fiction
 
Friday, October 23
 

6:30pm PDT

Walter Mosley: Hanging and Burning
Friday October 23, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch, Koret Auditorium
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FREE, $10–15 suggested donation, $33 for signed book

Co-presented with SFPL

In the latest addition to the inimitable Walter Mosley’s  Joe King Oliver series, King finds himself accepting (again at his grandmother’s request) a case from Arman Babylon, a powerful Los Angeles gangster now dying from cancer. Babylon’s granddaughter, Twyla Mann, has been missing for years, and he’s desperate to find her before he passes. The search pulls King into the Babylons’ stained past and the cold case of Dalia Shorts, a torch singer who vanished without a trace and whom Arman was once suspected of killing. As King follows her trail from L.A. to New York and back, he’ll realize nothing is what it seems as he uncovers a pattern of violence that has targeted the women around Babylon for decades. How much will King be willing to risk to finally set things right? In conversation with Carvell Wallace. Doors at 6:00pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Carvell Wallace

Carvell Wallace

Carvell Wallace is the best-selling author of the memoir Another Word For Love — a Kirkus Prize finalist, and Whiting Award winner. As a podcaster he has been nominated for a Peabody and won a Kaleidoscope Award in Journalism. His essays have appeared in the New York Times Maga... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA... Read More →
Friday October 23, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch, Koret Auditorium 100 Larkin St, San Francisco
  Fiction, FREE
 
Thursday, December 10
 

7:30pm PST

Marlon James: The Disappearers
Thursday December 10, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PST
Sydney Goldstein Theater
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$53 with code LITQUAKE5

Co-presented with City Arts & Lectures

In his new novel The Disappearers, award-winning author Marlon James traces the lives of a group of gay men in 1980s Jamaica after they are attacked by a mob, leaving one of them dead and the rest with terrible physical and mental injuries. As each man attempts to heal, they must also decide how they will continue their lives after facing such horrible violence. Some choose to ignore the event, while others look for retribution. In the process, James unveils the compromises society demands of oppressed people if they want to survive. In conversation with founder of NPR’s award-winning podcast Code Switch Shereen Marisol Meraji. A limited number of tickets include a copy of The Disappearers. 
Moderators
avatar for Shereen Marisol Meraji

Shereen Marisol Meraji

Shereen Marisol Meraji is a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, where she also serves as the head of audio. She is a founder of NPR’s award-winning podcast Code Switch, which Apple Podcasts named its first-ever “Show of the Year.” Her past City Arts & Lectures interviews include Viet Thanh Nguyen, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Marlon James

Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a... Read More →
Thursday December 10, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PST
Sydney Goldstein Theater 275 Hayes St, San Francisco
  Fiction
 

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American Bookbinders Museum
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