22 Oct Litquake 2011

Litquake is San Francisco’s literary festival. And it is no small venue. During a weeks time the city is flooded with readings by several hundred writers from all over the world, and the program is a pick-and-choose from some of the best authors out there. This year it went from October 7th – 15th.

With my fellow Norwegian citizen Hanne and our American friend (yes, we have an American friend), we decided to hit Valencia street the last day of the festival for its Lit Crawl. It truly made a great impression being able to enter everything from bookshops, cafees and even hair salons (!) packed with people listening to new, aspiring writers as well as established, elderly ones.

And the lit scene was not for novelists or poets only – it was for people writing in all forms. Mission police station was dedicated to the crime reporters at SF Examiner, and they had collectively written their own detective stories for this evening. The evening’s best event was, however, no doubt at the Make out Room. Here, the literary online magazine The Rumpus presented some of their new writers. One of the coolest readings was by a woman who’d written a novel about a ratpack of female rappers at a high school doin’ their thang and obviously — since we’re in San Francisco — being led by a fresh lesbian.

Out of all the five events we went to, the evening’s greatest reading was by Stephen Elliott, a Rumpus-staff member and a writer. His “San Francisco” was a piece dedicated solely to the absurdities and wonders of this city, and as a foreigner his piece to the point described my own impressions and feelings about this city.

It is here for all of you to read:http://therumpus.net/2010/05/san-francisco/

Have a great weekend!