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San Francisco” a city of writers” to come alive when Andrew Sean Greer, Amy Tan and Michelle Tea take the stage along with other notable local authors and special musical guests for opening night’s Tales: An Evening with Armistead and Friends
 
Following 8 days of programming will feature more than 350 authors including Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley in conversation with Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket); Dave Eggers joining 8 other writers at Porchlight to tell stories about day job hell; George Smoot taking on science and religion; lunch with Ann Patchett; Kidquake; Mark Morford talking dharma with punk monk Noah Levine; Book Group Therapy; a Literary Death Match with troubadour/author John Wesley Harding among the competitors; a packed slate of readers at Off the Richter Scale at SFPL's Koret Auditorium, including Kim Addonizio, Colby Buzzell, Derek Kirk Kim, Ishmael Reed, Vikram Chandra, and Kate Braverman; a night of Feisty Femmes at The Bubble Lounge with Peggy Orenstein among others, and closing night capper, the Lit Crawl, winding its way down Valencia in the Mission
 
 
Festival to run October 6-13 - Full schedule now online at litquake.org!!
 
 
San Francisco, August 20, 2007- Litquake 2007 is set to begin Saturday, October 6, with a full slate of readings at the SFPL's Koret Auditorium followed by an opening night bash, Tales: An Evening with Armistead and Friends at the Herbst Theater. Arguably the city's most famous living author, Armistead will be honored on stage by Bay Area literary luminaries such as Amy Tan, Andrew Sean Greer, Michelle Tea, K.M. Soehnlein, Susie Bright, and Father Guido Sarducci sharing anecdotes and reading from selections from Maupin's works. Special musical guests and multimedia presentations will add to the evening's celebratory tone. Tickets will be available through www.cityboxoffice.com starting on August 21.
 
“Maupin’s were the books I stole from people’s shelves,” says Andrew Sean Greer, “read in secret in the bookstore aisles, and finally got the nerve (and money) to buy and pass among my friends. What more can you want from an author than that his mere words can make you happy”
 
As part of Litquake's goal of increasing its proportion of writer's per square foot, the following 8 days of programming will feature 22 events and more authors than you can shake (or throw) a drink at in venues ranging from the swank to the rank” plush theaters, nice bars, dive bars, galleries, retail outlets, libraries, laundromats … and even bookstores.
 
For complete schedule go here or log onto litquake.org
 
San Francisco ” A City of Writers

San Francisco is teeming with writers. Jane Smiley, Dave Eggers, Ishmael Reed, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), Armistead Maupin, Andrew Sean Greer, and Amy Tan are all household names. But, they share their turf with many others not quite so well known who dazzle local and national critics and readers alike with their elegant and cunning way around a narrative, such as Michelle Tea, K.M. Soehnlein, Austin Grossman, Kiara Brinkman, Daniel Alarcon, Holly Shumas, Frank Portman, Beth Lisick, and Jack Hirschman, to name just a few.
 
Off the Richter Scale gets things going by featuring some seriously inventive programming opening weekend at the SFPL's Koret Auditorium. Participating authors include Adam Johnson, Kate Braverman, Ishmael Reed, Kim Addonizio, Vikram Chandra, Bharati Mukherjee and many more. New this year is an hour entitled Find Your Inner Teen: Authors Teens Love … And so Will You. Gene Yang and Derek Kirk Kim” emerging as bona fide stars in the world of graphic novels” will be among the readers.
 
Come Monday the focus shifts to the always fascinating Porchlight Storytelling Series where authors are pushed onstage and required to TELL, not read a story. This year's lineup stars Dave Eggers, Marta Acosta, Eric Spitznagel, Litquake's Jack Boulware, Alvin Orloff, Robert Mailer Anderson, and Frank Portman. That same afternoon and evening the San Francisco Foundation will host two events designed to inform budding authors about how to pursue their careers.
 
During the rest of the week you can look forward to a science versus faith panel at The Commonwealth Club, Barely Published Authors, Kidquake, Jane Smiley in conversation with Daniel Handler, Feisty Femmes at the Bubble Lounge, Poptones at The Edinburgh Castle, and The Lesser Evil, an evening of original short stories at Varnish Fine Art. Dukes may or may not be put up Friday night when Litquake hosts a recent New York import you may have heard tell about” Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match. Among the readers: Daniel Handler and Wesley “John Wesley Harding” Stace. Among the judges: San Francisco Chronicle Books editor Oscar Villalon and New Yorker editor, Ben Greenman.
 
For the first time Litquake goes outside the city limits for author events at Kepler’s in Menlo Park with Haven Kimmel author of A Girl Named Zippy and Gail Tsukiyama who penned The Street of a Thousand Blossoms. Up in Corte Madera, Book Passage will host Julie Kavanagh, author of the new biography Nureyev: The Life.
 
Back here in the city, Park Chow will be the setting for a lunch put on by Books Inc. with author Ann Patchett who will talk about her new book, Run. Tickets are $60.00 and will be available as of 8/15 in all Books Inc. stores or online at www.booksinc.net.
 
Next, the festival goes to the Haight for the first time as The Booksmith hosts events with one of the founding fathers of the beat movement Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Ken Foster, author of the national bestselling memoir The Dogs Who Found Me.
 
As always, it all ends with the now-infamous Lit Crawl, a Saturday night literary pub crawl down Valencia in the Mission.
 
Opening Night Details

Tales: An evening with Armistead Maupin and Friends
Featuring Amy Tan, Andrew Sean Greer, Michelle Tea, K.M. Soehnlein, Susie Bright, Father Guido Sarducci

Saturday, Oct. 6
Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness Ave
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-621-6600
 
Tickets Available Through www.cityboxoffice.com starting August 20

More information at www.litquake.org
 
About Litquake

Litquake is an annual San Francisco literary festival produced by the Litquake Literary Project, a California nonprofit founded by San Francisco writers that brings together a wide range of authors for over a week of readings and panel discussions. Organizers created the event 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: 10/6-13, 2007. www.litquake.org

Litquake 2007 is sponsored in part by SF Arts Commission, redroom.com, Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, KALW, KDFC, AccesSF, San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, craigslist, Chronicle Books, HarperOne, New College of California, MacAdam/Cage, San Francisco Public Library, Zellberbach Family Foundation, Modernism Gallery, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Tricycle Press.
Fiscal Sponsor: Intersection for the Arts