Litseen is a project of Quiet Lightning, a literary nonprofit with the mission to foster community based on literary expression and to provide a safe and supportive arena for said expression.

Started in 2010 as a way to help me cover the literary scene in a column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Litseen maintained a daily calendar of the Bay Area’s literary events — as comprehensive as possible. The calendar grew out of a basic html list of links that I kept for myself in a digital sticky note into a hub of ongoing series we fed the calendar from weekly; we also had a feature that allowed community members to add their own events to the calendar.

More than anything, we went to a lot of readings and filmed them. Sometimes we talked about them (also, sometimes, about books we read). I say we because there have been many contributors to this site, from one-off book or event reviews to regular contributors and columns.

For a long time, the better part of 5 years, we conducted weekly interview profiles of local authors, and for 15 years we curated SF/Arts‘ monthly literary highlights.

Like much else, when covid shut everything down in 2020 the nature of this site shifted. We’re still figuring out what kind of role we would like to serve with Litseen, but for now we’re migrating all of the site’s content to quietlightning.org, which will provide a home for Litseen’s archives and any future services.

If you see something missing from the hub, have ideas on what a future iteration might or should include, or want to just share something you’ve written, please don’t hesitate to send me a line.

Sincerely,

Evan Karp
Founder, Quiet Lightning and Litseen
May 2026