Litquake 2026: Full Schedule

7:30pm PDT

Tuesday October 6, 2026 7:30pm - 9:00pm PDT

$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

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

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

City San Francisco

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

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

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