SF’s Bookstores and Readings Reflect a Lively Literary Scene

Litquake's own Jack Boulware, as quoted in The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2010:

“There isn’t an enormous publishing and entertainment industry in San Francisco,” said Jack Boulware, a journalist and author who is one of Litquake’s founders. “If you’re a writer here, you aren’t bound by restrictions you might find in other cities; you can express yourself and innovate and experiment.”

“And,” he deadpanned, “everyone is stoned and sitting in cafes in the middle of the day.”

There's more about San Francisco and our great literary community in the story on The New York Times website, but the opening focuses on Litquake:

"ON a balmy fall evening in the Mission District of San Francisco, hundreds of people spilled onto Valencia Street, where they chatted happily for a few minutes before pouring back into bookstores, cafes and theaters. It was a giddy, animated crowd, but most of all bookish — a collection of fans and believers, here to listen to the written word.

The occasion was an event called Litquake, which, over the course of nine days, would draw some 13,000 residents and visitors to readings by scores of authors, many of them — like Maxine Hong Kingston and Daniel Handler (a k a Lemony Snicket) — local celebrities. The “Lit Crawl” finale alone featured more than 400 readings at bars, laundromats and even the police station in a single evening.

Litquake is an annual event, but on almost any day or night in San Francisco, there is likely to be something for the literary-inclined — a poetry reading at a bar, a book swap in a cafe or a reading in the book-lined lobby of the Rex Hotel. This is a place, after all, where dozens of fiercely independent bookstores not only survive but thrive, thanks to a city of readers who seem to view books not only as a pleasure, but as a cause."

read full article at The New York Times website