Our condolences to friends and family of David Foster Wallace, who took his own life last weekend in southern California. He was friends with many in the Bay Area, and shared literary agents with several local authors. Information is still flying around the web, Google his name to find out more. In memoriam, Harper’s has posted many of his more well-known stories for the magazine free of charge.

At the same time 800 million people are going hungry on our planet, 1 billion of us are overweight. That’s just one of many fascinating revelations in the new book Stuffed and Starved by Bay Area author Raj Patel. On Friday, October 10 Litquake presents “The Future of Food: Raj Patel in conversation with Molly Watson,” at the newly reopened California Academy of Sciences. The venue opens to the public September 25, and this will be one of its very first events. (A very cool environmentally forward building in its own right, incorporating among many unique features, the world’s largest sustainable roof.). Tickets are available in advance at 888-670-4433.

Literary quotes permanently tattooed onto the skin, from Gandhi, Ayn Rand, Che Guevara, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut, Shel Silverstein, and…the Dave Matthews Band?