One literary organizer said to another: “Can you get a couple of Babar people to come in and read at the Octopus?” The resulting reading…
Deb Olin Unferth‘s new collection of stories Wait Till You See Me Dance (Graywolf) is full of surprises, with twists and turns that often leave the…
For the fifth annual SFJazz Poetry Festival, Genny Lim has curated more than four nights of interdisciplinary performances. She’s used the opportunity to invest in…
Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (2010), was working on a book inspired by a Chekhov…
Shortly after Dixie De La Tour moved to the Bay Area, she received an invitation that would change her life. “I used to have a…
In 2006, Kim Rosen arrived at the Tasaru Safe House in Narok, Kenya, and stood before a group of Maasai girls who had run away…
Disaster has long been an obsession for Oakland poet Madison Davis, whose debut book of that name is out this week from Bay Area press…
Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Jeremiah Barber were sitting on their couch, horrified by Donald Trump’s 100-day plan. “It occurred to us that he’s such a…
In the midst of a feud with the poet Denise Levertov about the possibilities of politically motivated art, George Oppen wrote his only essay, “The…
Cleve Jones’ new memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, begins with a single-sentence paragraph: “The movement saved my life.” “That’s not rhetoric,…
For two months in 1913, the San Francisco Bulletin published daily installments of the autobiography of an anonymous prostitute the paper called Alice Smith. Her…
It started with the simple, perhaps under-asked question: “Wouldn’t it be fun if we did something really crazy?” So said City Lights events director Peter…
In the beginning of her first book, House A (Omnidawn), Jennifer S. Cheng writes: “It is important to note that before language, children experience memories…
Now in its 17th year, Litquake began when a group of friends organized an afternoon of readings in Golden Gate Park. Over the years, it’s…
Born in Ecuador, Mauro Javier Cardenas planned to return home after receiving an education in the United States, with the intention of changing the political…
Litquake runs Oct. 6-15 and begins with an opening-night gala celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare, with poet Gary Soto, harpist Shelley Phillips and a special…
Shortly after winning the 2013 National Book Award for her second collection of poems, Incarnadine, Portland’s Mary Szybist told the Paris Review that she started…
In a tribute to the life and work of Justin Chin, who died late last year at age 46, Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press…
Love, money, property, state, war, death and revolutionary change: These are the themes of the “Seven Meditations on Political Sadomasochism,” one of the most famous…
What started as a late-night text message has turned into a five-day East Bay Poetry Summit, with poets flying in from as far away as…
The underground Cacophony Society, which in the ’90s spawned outfits in more than a dozen major cities and inspired both Chuck Palahniuk‘s “Fight Club” and…
From around 1996 to 1999, Brian Lucas edited a poetry magazine and chapbook press called Angle, the issues of which were stapled and letter-size and…
To kick off last summer’s long journey into winter and to raise funds for its annual programming, Small Press Traffic invited the larger community of…
The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s hosting of “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg” overlaps with City Lights’ celebration of its 60th year this week with…
In 2008, Kimberly Escamilla founded the nonprofit International Poetry Library of San Francisco to serve the rapidly growing number of master of fine arts students…
