Good Vibes: Litquake Literary Festival Spotlight
The Litquake Literary Festival is taking over San Francisco from October 10th through the 19th, with events taking place all across the city. (The name of the festival comes from a poem written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who recited the piece at the 2002 festival after arriving two hours late due to car trouble.)
With so many literary festivities--just take a look at the program--how do you pick and choose what to attend? Feminist poetry readings in a bike shop? Bookbinding at the San Francisco Public Library? Perhaps competitive wordsmithing at the Bay Area Pun-Off? Or the Lit Crawl, a "a massive, one-night literary pub crawl throughout the city’s Mission District" that "brings together 500+ authors and close to 10,000 fans for the world’s largest free pop-up literary event"--including a book fair on the festival's closing day/night. Truly, Litquake offers something to suit bibliophiles of all types.
One event that might pique the interest of our readers is the Book Club of California's presentation of Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad. Stanford University history professor and author Gordon H. Chang will be talking about his book that explores and celebrates the role of Chinese railroad workers in remaking and shaping America's Transcontinental Railroad. Chang will discuss the contributions of these early migrant workers and how their story was long relegated to the sidelines of history, which he hopes his book will help correct.
The event, which will be held at the Book Club of California on Monday, October 14th is free with registration requested here. Hospitality begins at 5pm, with the presentation starting at 6pm.
