Sue Gilmore, The Contra Costa Times
Sunday, October 2, 2005

The sheer magnitude of the eruption entitles it to a knockout registering on the cultural Richter scale. Litquake ‘05, a nine-day lovefest for writers and readers, sets San Francisco a-tremble starting Friday, with 17 separate events — many of them free — expected to attract more than 200 authors.

Organized and run by San Francisco authors themselves, this sixth annual celebration of Bay Area literature opens with a "Howl" and goes out with an even bigger bang — a four-hour-plus literary pub crawl down Valencia Street on Oct. 15 with stops for readings at 26 different venues.

We have authorized poetic license for the "Howl" reference. Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem is marking its 50th anniversary, and Litquake launches at 8 p.m. Friday at the Herbst Theatre with a "Howl Redux" tribute, featuring archival film footage of the bearded guru of the Beats himself doing the reading honors. Also onstage reading a work of his own will be fellow poet Michael McClure, a member of the original gang of five at that first reading in a converted auto garage on Fillmore Street in 1955.

The second part of the evening is a star-studded showcase of Bay Area literary talent, with author-celebrity pairings lined up for readings. Armistead Maupin will do Mark Twain and Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler will read Gertrude Stein. James Dalessandro has some Dashiell Hammett up his sleeve, and Cintra Wilson will read Ambrose Bierce. Other pairings include Sean San Jose reading Randy Shilts, Amy Tan reading Iris Chang, Barry Gifford reading Jack Kerouac, devorah major reading Bob Kaufman and Andrew Sean Greer reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The celebrity quotient edges up a notch with actor Michael Madsen stepping up to read John Steinbeck and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown reading, appropriately enough, Jack London.

Tickets for "Howl Redux," at $20 each, are on sale through www.cityboxoffice.com or at 415-392-4400. There are also $100 VIP tickets that give premium seating and admission to a post-show reception.

By contrast, admission to all the venues along the 5-9:30 p.m. Lit Crawl that caps the festival on Oct. 15 is free (but you buy your own booze). Space is too limited to describe all the events, but the readings will include poetry, women’s adventure tales, crime fiction, literary magazines, erotica, travel writing, fantasy and science fiction, memoirs and much more. Expect to hear from authors such as Cara Black, Wes Nisker, Michael Shapiro, Joyce Maynard, Josh Kornbluth, Cameron Tuttle, Ben Fong-Torres, Francisco X. Alarcon, K.M. Soehnlein, Bharati Mukherjee and Po Bronson.

Some selected highlights among events between the "Howl" opener and the pub crawl:

"Appetite for Distraction," co-produced by Porch Light, puts 10 authors — including Joshua Braff, Edie Meidav and Susan Steinberg — on the spot, forcing them to tell more or less impromptu stories without benefit of text or memorization. It takes place at 7 p.m. Oct. 10 in San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St. (above Cafe Du Nord).

"Short Shorts: First Among Equals" has six short-story writers, including Daniel Alarcon and Yiyun Li, reading from works specifically created for the evening, 6 p.m. Oct. 11 at Varnish Fine Art, 77 Natoma St.

A complete schedule is available on the Litquake Web site, www.litquake.org.