Although the news of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is getting more media attention, San Francisco's tenth annual Litquake festival kicks off today. Speaking as a Litquake committee member, I'm amazed how many meetings, e-mails, phone calls etc. it takes to make a literary festival happen.
Well, the hour's finally come... Here is 7x7's guide to Litquake 2009. Tonight, October 9th, while Blue Angels soar overhead in celebration oif Fleet Week, Litquake kicks off with the Book Ball, 8 pm, Green Room, second floor of the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue. The kind of event William Hazlitt might have been thinking of when he wrote the following -- “Like children, our step-mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe, and then, as if we were a burden to her to support, lets us fall down again. Yet what brave sublunary things does not this pageant present, like a ball or fete of the universe!”
I'll be at the raree-show tonight, and on Sunday October 11th I'll attend the Barely Published Authors event, one of my favorite parts of Litquake, MCed by the dashing Ransom Stephens. 7 pm, Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd Street.
Next week I'll blog about Litquake some more, but now I have to go look for some clothes that don't have holes in them... The dress code for tonight was described to me as "either classy with a hint of eccentric or eccentric with a hint of classy," and with some effort I might be able to pull off the second of these...