Litquake 2026

FREE

Co-presented with City Lights

How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir is an experiment in nonlinear autobiography by the author of the American Book Award–winning Book of the Other, Truong Tran. Beginning in the present—at a writing residency in the aftermath of this success—How to Exi(s)t unpeels the layers between present and past in bursts of brief poetic essays. Unsparing, even caustic in its insistence on racism as a dominant note of American life, but marked by surprising tenderness and humor, How to Exi(s)t is a compelling portrayal of Tran’s pedagogical philosophy as well as an interrogation of a poetic language that conceals as much as it reveals. In conversation with Garrett Caples.

FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Co-presented with San Francisco Public Library

Litquake’s Elder Project brings creative writing and storytelling workshops to retirement communities across San Francisco and Oakland. Seniors participate in reading, storytelling, discussion, hands-on creative writing, and in-class sharing sessions to explore their own stories, the stories of their communities, and stories about the world, while using the techniques of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction that they've learned in classes. Share in the beauty of their words, hear their stories, listen to your elders.

FREE, $10–$15 suggested donation

Co-presented with Memoir Nation

These four memoirists are, in different ways, writing into spaces where their experience has been minimized, misread, or actively suppressed. Judy Juanita's California Fever Dream spans sixty years of writing focused on Black activism and feminism. In I Love You So Many, journalist Terria Smith shares lessons learned from a career sharing stories about the richness of Native people’s lives. Elena Dudum's They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful is a call to action against institutional silencing and censorship. Finally, Caroline Paul has spent her career writing women into adventure narratives that historically excluded them, most recently in Why Fly. Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, co-founders of the Memoir Nation podcast and online community, will guide a compelling discussion on the power of this truth-telling form. Doors at 6:30pm.

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.

FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Co-presented with Marcus Books
Journalist and activist George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, their bestselling, critically acclaimed YA “memoir-manifesto” about growing up Black and queer, has been, since its 2020 publication, a source of solace and support for young people. It’s also consistently been at or near the top of the ALA and PEN America’s lists of the most challenged and banned books. Undeterred, Johnson continues to practice their fearless form of truth-telling, this time in their first memoir for adults, And If I Die Before I Wake. Here Johnson relates a traumatic 15 years in their life—navigating an HIV diagnosis, alcoholism, loss, and those disheartening and frightening book bans—while relying more than ever on the love of friends, family, and community and finding, against the odds, their most authentic self. In conversation with children’s and young adult author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, co-founder of the national advocacy group Authors Against Book Bans. Doors at 6:00pm.