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Longtime Executive Committee stalwart Elise Proulx rises to position as cofounders Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl focus energies on programming and creative issues as Artistic Directors

San Francisco, March 13, 2008 - Litquake cofounders Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl are pleased to announce the appointment of Elise Proulx as new Executive Director for the City’s beloved and growing literary festival.

Literary agent Elise Proulx began volunteering with the organization in 2002, and quickly became indispensable as a producer, grant-writer and ultimately-working very closely with cofounders Boulware and Ganahl-on the direction and success of the development campaign of the last three years.

“My goal,” says Proulx, “is to see Litquake continue growing in a sustainable way. Jack and Jane have had great success capturing the energy of the Bay Area literary scene and feeding off that energy, so I want to push the organization into the future by establishing a secure base of operations, developing a board of directors, and establishing new relationships with a variety of funders.”

Jack Boulware and Jane Ganahl founded the festival in 1999 and named it Litstock. That first festival featured 30 writers in Golden Gate Park, who read works to an audience of approximately 200. Since then, the festival changed its name in 2002 and in 2007 broke the 10,000 attendance mark, with over 350 participating authors.

The cofounders-and now Artistic Directors-sought Proulx for the position because of her experience as a literary agent, her proven track record with the organization, and an overall talent for getting things done. As a result, the pair are now are now freed up to concentrate on the programming and other creative issues that make the festival so unique.

Co-founder and co-artistic director of Litquake, Jane Ganahl is the author of the novelized memoir Naked on the Page: the Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife (which has been optioned by TBS for a TV series), and editor of the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. She has been a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area for 25 years, and during her years at the Chronicle, was columnist of the popular Single Minded feature.

“Jack and I will keep doing what we’ve always done,” says Ganahl, “devise fantastic, inventive programming that brings literature to the masses. But now we have Elise to help Litquake expand and improve!”

Ganahl’s partner in Litquake, Jack Boulware, is a veteran freelance writer, journalist, and storyteller. He contributes to many national and international publications, and for several years was columnist for the SF Weekly and Salon. He is the author of San Francisco Bizarro, an unorthodox guidebook to the city, as well as the upcoming punk rock history, Journey to the End of the East Bay.

“Elise was our first choice to help shepherd Litquake to the next level, and I’m sure she’ll do a terrific job. Jane and I will still be very involved, and we look forward to this 2008 festival and beyond.”

About Elise Proulx

Elise Proulx is the executive director of Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival and also a literary agent with San Francisco’s Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Agency. Elise was previously an agent at Lowenstein Associates, an editor at Henry Holt and Owl Books, an associate editor at The Threepenny Review, and has edited and written for Spin Magazine and Fox News. She’s a graduate of U.C. Berkeley.

About Litquake

Litquake, San Francisco’s annual literary festival, was founded by Bay Area writers in order to put on a week-long literary spectacle for book lovers, complete with cutting-edge panels, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings. Organizers created the festival to represent a lively and inclusive overview of San Francisco’s thriving contemporary literary scene and to foster interest in literature, perpetuate a sense of literary community as well as host a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing as a complement to the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals. Dates: 10/3-11, 2008.