Bay Area Reporter - August 24, 2006

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Hob-nobbing with author types at a benefit for Litquake 2006

by Roberto Friedman

Thanks to the lovely press liaison Liam Passmore for inviting Out There to the Green Room for Monday night’s Booked: A Benefit for Litquake, the SF literary festival that begins its seventh year of readings and pub crawls this coming October 4. Deep down under all the artifice, Out There is a literary type, because there’s more to life than books ” but not much more.

The party’s official hosts included SF Chron editor Phil Bronstein and Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame. “Special guest authors” like Tobias Wolff and Ishmael Reed wandered around the room and balcony overlooking City Hall. We chatted with author K.M. Soehnlein, whose second novel You Can Say You Knew Me When gets a paperback release this fall.

The invitation specified “literati attire,” but since we do most of our writing in a bowling shirt and shredded jeans, we weren’t sure what this entailed. “Shabby chic” and “bling” were also acceptable according to the invite, so we decided to go with our basic gumshoe ensemble. Last year, we made the society pages; this year, maybe we’d merit a cameo in someone’s neo-noir novel.

Party games included a silent auction of books and chances to lunch with your favorite boldface author. Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware said, “You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the ass a silent auction is.” When last we saw Passmore, he was toting around spoken-word performer Beth Lisick’s purse, we guess for safe-keeping. For more info on the upcoming literary fest, this year featuring 350 authors at 45 events, go to litquake.org.