The Poetry Foundation/Courtesy

The intimate selections of poetry read by Alice Notley and Simona Schneider at UC Berkeley’s Holloway Reading Series on Thursday made for a night of contradictions; the poets’ performances were lovely yet severe, and their content felt personal yet universal, both descriptive and emotive. Before the event’s slightly delayed start, the reading’s comfortable tone was set as the breezy autumn evening rendered Wheeler Hall’s Maude Fife Room warm and welcoming to the 40 or so eager listeners.

A UC Berkeley student introduced each poet with an eloquent, complimentary biography of the respective poet’s life, work and influence. These introductions were influential additions, as the appreciative students expressed the incredible extent to which poetry can affect aspiring minds.

The first to read was Simona Schneider, a graduate student at UC Berkeley who delivered a collection she wrote during a summer  spent in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her determined delivery was sprinkled with interludes of smiles and laughs that brought listeners back to the present after being pulled into the meticulously thorough worlds constructed in her poems. Selections that felt particularly moving were those that concentrated on the extraordinary quality of the ordinary; Schneider recounts her absorption in the incredible innovation of Velcro as one of a few “Small Miracles on Public Transit” and meditates on a “gas station to save our souls,” found along the roadway of an American landscape. Her loving, confident tone permitted listeners to recognize the immense beauty found in the everyday.

Where Schneider discovered small miracles of the outer world, Notley explored her inner passions; where Schneider smiled between her works, Notley grasped the podium and her pages, delivering her pieces without pause or introduction. Notley has been recognized with awards including the International Griffin Poetry Prize in 2002 and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 2007. Many of the pieces she read shifted between dreams and wakefulness — I don’t know how to dream, but I’m dreaming — but the shameless honesty of her writing makes her dream state relatable, even appealing. She reasons aloud how she fits into this world: “In your assigned role, you’re a woman, but I’ve always been a poet … Why do I have human features?” She describes her power and courage openly in lines such as, “I like this story, but I like my voice better.” An experienced meditator on self-awareness and self-assertion, Notley delivered her work with passion and honesty.

The pairing of Schneider and Notley at the Holloway Reading Series reading made for a night that was satisfyingly complete. Their performances were both light and strong, exposed and determined, and their works balanced between the observational and the expressive. Schneider’s and Notley’s writings and performances were inspiring, revealing and unapologetically human.

Contact Anna Horrocks at ahorrocks@dailycal.org.

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Scribner's Sons /Courtesy

If you’ve never read “The Shining,” you probably have only a mental image of Jack Nicholson (or Homer Simpson) announcing his entrance with a menacing, “HERE’S JOHNNY!” Although the Kubrick treatment of the classic Stephen King novel departed wildly from the original text, it retained much of the scare-juice found in the story of a haunted hotel and a special little boy.

“Doctor Sleep” is Stephen King’s sequel to the work that brought us REDRUM by the bucketful. Little Danny Torrance is all grown up, but the monsters of his childhood have not gone away. He is told by his mentor that he must reach out to a young girl named Abra who has the same ”shine” he does, and together, they must fight a roving band of monsters who eat the children of their talented tribe. “Doctor Sleep” delivers on its promise of resolution for the tormented Torrance family but reminds us that life is a wheel that must turn back to where it all began. For longtime fans, this story began in 1977 and has finally come back around.

There is a lot to love about “Doctor Sleep.” King has long been at the loom of his collected fictions, weaving them together in a complicated series of adjoining universes where one story crisscrosses another and they work together to tell their tale. There are callbacks in his newest work to “The Dark Tower” series, but also to “Firestarter,” “Carrie,” “The Stand” and “It.”

These signposts are only perceptible to those familiar with his work. In many ways, “Doctor Sleep” is a long piece of fan service. For people who cannot let the talented kid or the haunted hotel from “The Shining” fade from their memories, “Doctor Sleep” tells what happened next. It is a thrilling tale, both frightening and exciting, and it never fails to grip the reader. King even hired Rocky Wood, an expert in King’s canon, to ensure continuity between the original work and the sequel.

There are a few small things that take away from “Doctor Sleep.” The thread of the story from which the title is taken is only tenuously related to the rest of the tale. It becomes important in the climax but relies on the character of Abra’s great-grandmother, who was never properly fleshed out, so the plot fails to pack the punch it might have. There is one unforgivable Dickensian the-pauper-is-actually-a-prince moment that made me fling the book down in the disgust of utter predictability.

Also, King’s poorly concealed hatred of technology (the subject of one of his worst novels to date, “Cell”) bleeds through, and his terminology is sometimes very dated. A background character in “Doctor Sleep” is jarringly and thoughtlessly given the same name as one of the victims of Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs.” “Doctor Sleep” is a book about terrifyingly potent mental powers, and yet pages are spent on long drives and telephone calls. Better editing could have made this novel a tour-de-force rather than a tour-de-Iowa.

Read “Doctor Sleep” if you are already a Stephen King fan. It’s as comfortable as an old pair of shoes, and the walk you take will be exciting. The novel will return you to your favorite paths in a dark wood, and you will see people you remember along the way. If you are new to King and looking to be scared, read “The Shining.” Read “Carrie.” Read the earlier, grittier pieces of this legendary talent and come to understand why the rest of us keep coming back, even though the woods have gotten thinner and the spooks are a little predictable. Because despite the waning efforts of his later years, the trees are still carved with “Long Live the King.”

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Kristina Bedrossian/Courtesy

Almost every teenage girl writes poetry. These poems live long lives on lined paper, in unseen notebooks and buried in defunct LiveJournal accounts. A grown woman comes across them and feels nostalgia, some familiarity with her former self, but paramount among those feelings usually is embarrassment.

Poet and UC Berkeley alumna Alicia Zakon, even on the eve of publication, admits embarrassment is still the strongest emotion she has toward her own verse. It is very probable that readers will feel the same way.

Zakon is animated when she speaks. When she told me she was a dance teacher in addition to being a poet, I was not surprised. She spoke with me about her poetry project, “Laundry & Love Notes,” as well as her Kickstarter and her larger mission to empower young women through teaching poetry as self-expression.

We began with the title of the book. Zakon explained: “I love alliteration! But really, laundry for me is a metaphor, talking about the process of self-growth and development and how important it is to do your own personal work.

“It celebrates the process where you work through your issues, and you put it up there for other people to see, so you grow from it, and other people learn from your experience. Many of these poems I wrote without ever intending for them to reach an audience, but now I’m choosing to share it to let other people relate to it.”

Laundry is a good metaphor for the book, and the element of exposure is more than a little present. In this collection, Zakon discusses her family dynamic and home life from a very young age, as well as the unrequited crushes and fumbling self-discoveries of adolescence.

Each section and period of time is headed with an icon of care indications for garments that seem keyed to the subject matter: poems of pain marked with the pictogram of wringing, the tender pieces marked as hand-wash only.

Zakon’s style in them is modern and individualized, although her voice emerges as a youthful one and never really grows up.

When asked about her poetic influences, she named some local favorites: “June Jordan, definitely. Although I never met her, I got to take part in her program Poetry for the People.

“She framed the personal and political, and her program focused on poets with powerful stories as well as the poetic form. She also wrote with a lot of empathy and was able to embody people’s stories that were not her own. I really admire that about her.”

“I also really enjoy the work of one of my peers, Chinaka Hodge,” Zakon said. “She’s a great local poet and playwright with a real storytelling spirit, and she tells the stories of people who don’t normally get to tell them themselves.”

Zakon’s writing habits stem from an unusual parental practice. When I asked her about her inspiration, she cited her mother. However, her mother didn’t inspire her indirectly but rather in a very immediate way.

“My mom, like around age 5, got me one of those little lock-and-key diaries, and she used to give me writing prompts,” Zakon said. “She always wanted us to live life but also reflect about where we were and where we wanted to be. She would give me prompts like, ‘Where do you see yourself at age 27?’ So when I go back and read those, it definitely lines up differently.”

Zakon admits that her younger self imagined marriage and children by now.

“And my family … we didn’t always communicate well verbally, so writing became a way for me to have that relationship with myself and have a safe space to express my feelings about what was going on,” she said.

When asked where her art comes from, Zakon’s answer was familiar and jived with her work. She predictably related it to the numinous qualities of experience and the wish to relive the intense moments in life.

Zakon relives heartbreak and the building of the self in poems that are very personal yet lacking in effect.

Zakon’s Kickstarter campaign — which as of press time is less than half-funded and is open until Sept. 27 — aims to fund “Laundry & Love Notes” as well as an outreach tour for her to teach self-knowledge through poetry to young women all over the country. Her motivations for this program come from her own life.

“Chinaka Hodge came and did a workshop in one of my English classes at Berkeley High School,” she said. “I went home that night and wrote a bunch of poems. Some of them I share even now at slams and at open mics. That was a powerful one-time experience that set me on this path, and I’d like to provide the same for others.”

Despite being born of these powerful connections and emotions, there is nothing striking in “Laundry & Love Notes.” It is not groundbreaking or heartbreaking poetry, and it will not change your life.

Zakon’s aims are noble, but her talent is average. Her verse is perfectly common and speaks to a common experience. If this book isn’t moving, it is at least highly relatable. Reading Zakon’s poetry is as intimate and as exciting as watching someone do her laundry — but with the suspicion that if you tried on her freshly washed clothes, they might fit.

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Lu Han/Senior Staff

Before “Breaking Bad,” back in the good old days of Berkeley, the drug everyone talked about was bubbled and cooked in glass beakers and was called LSD. The best LSD on the market was called Owsley, named for the man who made it refined and pure and popularized it through the Grateful Dead.

Owsley Stanley is gone; he died in a car accident in Australia in 2011. He is recalled in a memoir, “Owsley and Me: My LSD Family,” by his former partner Rhoney Gissen Stanley, who remembers him both fondly and fairly. Gissen Stanley’s blunt and witty prose recalls the tumultuous 1960s in Berkeley and Richmond, as well as her own participation in the manufacture of the drug that symbolized the decade.

Gissen Stanley and co-author Tom Davis describe the kaleidoscopic experience of tripping on acid while having sex with “Bear,” as Owsley liked to be called. The real trick of a memoir is for the author to reveal herself with one hand, keeping the reader focused on the other, looking always into the heart of the story. Gissen Stanley is not a great magician; the woman telling the story is the star of the show, and Owsley is just the sideshow moving in and out of the narrative with a sheet of tabs and an undying libido.

The result is not enchanting; it is instead a litany of name-dropping. According to the authors, Jimi Hendrix was a “dybbuk.” Janis Joplin palmed off her tiresome lovers. Jerry Garcia was “a bodhisattva.” The passages are also typical of any drug user’s diary: “I felt like a character living in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, part of the firmament. My self had shattered like an exploding star, and I was afraid.”

Despite its shortcomings, “Owsley and Me” is an occasionally enjoyable timepiece of the Berkeley that was. Gissen Stanley was involved in the requisite number of communist, anarchist and lesbian separatist groups on campus. She recalls her family’s involvement with the music and art of the period and how drug culture both informed and was informed by those media. She is neither generous nor vindictive with the memory of the late Owsley. She describes Owsley with an odd remoteness for a longtime companion and lover but conveys their intimacy with the level detail of their mundane cohabitation. He was an entrancing wizard of chemistry and an amateur philosopher; he hated all vegetables and carbs; he chased other women; he smelled like patchouli; he used astrology to decide when to begin his acid brew. Despite the details, the man himself does not emerge. He remains a legend, something glimpsed in a pipe dream.

Owsley and Gissen Stanley were not married; she adopted his surname for anonymity and because of their shared son, Starfinder. The discussion of illegal drug use and nontraditional family structures is handled with a cheerful lack of moral posturing. Gissen Stanley tells the story without shame and seemingly without regret. She even depicts Owsley and herself diminishing through aging, fading away, becoming squares and dentists and parents. It is the way of all things, but it is safe to say none of the great hippie luminaries saw it coming.

Rhoney Gissen Stanley is one of the numinous few who clustered around the swirling social centers generated by Owsley, Harvard researcher Timothy Leary and the rest of the kooks and chemists who fueled a revolution with an eye dropper. However, the best stories of sex, drugs, and rock and roll will never be told. This story of Owsley Stanley is complete but imperfect. The rest of these stories disappeared with the burning out of bright, beautiful stars and are locked in the memories of people who cannot recall them through the haze.

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Micah Fry/Staff

Somewhere in a cloister, there is a nun who kissed Elvis Presley.

There must be some people in the world who live a life without surprises. Most of us, however, find that life unfolds in ways we never expected, showing us that absolutely anything is possible. Mother Dolores Hart of the Order of St. Benedict has lived just such a life, from kissing the King to working for her god.

In her new interview-format autobiography, “The Ear of the Heart,” an aging and respected nun tells a story almost too unpredictable to be believed. Born in 1938, Hart had a difficult start in life. She describes her early life as fraught with the troubles of alcoholism and the terrible effects it had on both her parents, but she is able to look back without malice. Dolores grew up to be as beautiful as them, moving toward a career in film and on the stage. In 1957, she made her debut in “Loving You,” starring with Elvis Presley. Her agent advised the press to call her the girl all other girls would hate, because the script called for her to kiss Elvis. As with any story that passes through the orbit of a star of that magnitude, the interviewer asked Dolores what she made of the King. She describes him very differently than others have, focusing on his gentlemanly qualities and his adherence to religion. Hart recalls an Elvis who was always ready with a Bible quote and did not try to seduce her.

The book leads Hart through recollections of stardom and increasing notoriety in the 1950s. in 1960, she appeared in the well-received film “Where the Boys Are,” which dealt with sexuality in a fairly forthright way for its time. In 1961, she appeared in “Francis of Assisi” in the role of Saint Clare. In the movie, she went through the process of investiture (the ceremony of becoming a nun) on screen, in an odd foreshadowing of the direction her life would take. Later, Hart does not recall that this influenced her decision to enter the order, but it stands as a remarkable signpost of things to come. She starred in several more films until 1963, when her life came to a crossroads.

“The Ear of the Heart” tells the crux of Hart’s life with a kind and open honesty. The interview format keeps the book conversational, almost confessional. She was engaged to Don Robinson and loved him. She had hesitantly said yes, accepting the ring and insisting on keeping it secret for six months. Her career was destined for greatness; one promoter told her she could be as big as Elizabeth Taylor. She had beauty, talent and that indefinable quality necessary to constructing the mythos of a movie star. She had a future and a person who loved her and wanted to marry her. The decision she made would shock everyone; instead of pursuing any part of that life, she entered a monastery and took vows to become a Benedictine monk. In the book, she explains simply that her faith was the only thing she could not live without.

This story is exhaustive but does not answer the question of why this story must be told now — or at all. Mother Dolores may not profit from the work herself, but perhaps this mining of Hollywood history can be made to benefit her mission for people suffering from neuropathy. Loaded with reminiscences of mega-stars and glossy photographs of bygone days, “The Ear of the Hart” will likely find its way into the hands of many old movie fans and makes a great gift for the aging Catholic in your life.

Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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Phoenix Delman/Staff

“It never occurred to me that I could be one of those perverted monsters!”

So realized Chana Wilson, a blogger for The Huffington Post, during her story of self-discovery in a place where many young people first begin to notice their burgeoning sexuality — summer camp. After curiosity prompted her to consult her counselor about how lesbians actually have sex, her response (“with their knees”) brought Wilson this strange realization — as well as a curiosity about the lesbian lifestyle that never went away.

Wilson was one of many artists who spoke about queer life on July 28 in Kerouac Alley behind City Lights Bookstore. Curated and hosted by poet Michelle Tea, the Sister Spit literary series attempts to fairly portray, poke fun at and empathize with queer women and poets in the Bay Area in arenas beyond their sexuality. While originally a girls-only group in the ’90s, the “Sister Spit: Next Generation” spoken word and performance art collective has grown to include and represent all gender identities and sexual orientations. Poetry and short story topics at the event ranged from the pretentiousness of yoga culture to binge eating to haunted houses.

On writer Sara Seinberg’s decision to begin running, she said, “I was tired of being a shitty landlord to a good life.” Running later became a habit that has extended into her life far beyond just a mere fitness regime. From the joys of being completely unplugged (she would leave her phone and music at home) to becoming more aware of her body, Seinberg spoke of a new philosophy she’d gained from running — that of complete failure. “What other people think of me is none of my fucking business,” she said. “Runner’s high is an alchemy of wholeheartedness.”

Another artist, poet Carmella Fleming, sported an Amy Winehouse-esque beehive and spoke of Winehouse’s favorite topic: “I grew up, and all I got was a drug problem,” she sighed. Referring to two girls in love in her poem “These Girls,” a lyric too heartbreakingly personal not to be autobiographical, “Who are these girls, and how do they get away with behaving this way?”

One of the most strikingly flamboyant performers was DavEnd, a genderqueer songwriter and performer who took to the microphone in fishnets, a shiny blue dress and giant gold hoops. DavEnd began with jokes about the venue of the performance (“My friends asked me where I was performing, I told them ‘in an alley’”), then played accordion with utmost tenderness while singing about the process of self-acceptance: “I’ve been holding a match thinking I invented fire.” DavEnd is currently working on the musical “Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overly Traumatized Sometimes,” otherwise known as “F.A.G.G.O.T.S.: The Musical!”

Two of the most unexpected performances were those by Mariko Tamaki and Brontez Purnell, the former an actor and comedian and the latter a writer, dancer and musician. Tamaki described her experiences with haunted houses and offered helpful tips — “Don’t buy things that look like they might be important to a ghost” — as well as advice for a younger audience: “The evil kid (at school) is never the goth kid playing magic cards at recess … They play magic cards with your soul.” Purnell, an Alabama native turned Bay Area musician, told “stories from down South,” beginning with the minglings of his anxiety and his desire for sex and food and then going back to his childhood. Of his mother’s involvement in church politics, he quoted her as saying, “The new preacher was as crooked as a Baptist minister,” to much laughter from the audience.

Sister Spit is an eye-opening, earnest look at a world that either remains hidden or is out in the open enough for us to no longer consider. Coming a month after the neon colors and drunken revelries of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade, Sister Spit is an honest reminder that queer culture is more than a celebration that takes place once a year — it is a way of life for many individuals, containing all the mundane, simple joys of our own.

Contact Mohana Kute at mkute@dailycal.org.

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Rachel Francis/Courtesy

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and this definitely seems to ring true in the case of Rachel Francis, author of 2012’s “Life on Fire.” An up-and-coming writer, particularly in the styles of paranormal and comic fantasy, Francis has modeled her sophomore effort, “Proper Secrets,” quite remarkably on Austen’s work — in particular on her most famous work, “Pride and Prejudice.” The initial plot, even, matches that of “Pride and Prejudice,” as the novel begins with two sisters (who are also best friends) meeting a handsome stranger upon an excursion into town. They then discover that he has taken a house nearby and that their father has already invited him to dinner.

As the plot advances, however, and more is revealed about the characters and the world in which they live, it becomes clear that this is more than just an Austen copy. Set in an “alternate Europe,” Emily Worthing and her family live in Endland, which adheres not to Christianity but to a religion created by Francis that follows the Four Virtuous, the founders of Endland. Despite Francis’s successful efforts to create a story inspired by Austen, one of her biggest literary role models, Francis echoes Austen a little too closely: In Emily Worthing, the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet is clear; in Bridget, Emily’s sister, Jane Bennet appears. As the novel progresses, the story slowly but surely begins to pull away from the Austen arc but retains the bones of an Austen work. On the structure of an Austen work, Francis said, “I love how it is actually a very strict, bound form of storytelling. It’s extremely dialogue-heavy, and you get to illustrate a lot of social commentary just by using mannerisms and the dialogue and the characters.” Francis’s work is undoubtedly dialogue-heavy too — to the point that, at times, it feels mechanical and falters a little, detracting from the story by not allowing the reader to fully immerse themselves in it. Rather than creating a dialogue that allows the reader to perceive things that characters cannot and creates a sense of dramatic irony, Francis’s dialogue occasionally comes across as if the two characters talking are just going through the motions in order for Francis to inform the reader instead of establishing a genuine connection.

While Francis has been heavily influenced by Austen, she’s also drawn a great deal of her inspiration from the modern world and the spectrum of the way women are presented in books today, from “Fifty Shades of Grey” to Caitlin Moran’s “How to Be a Woman.” “My book definitely fits in on the spectrum (of recent books marketed to women that say that) feminism should be about women having choices,” Francis said. “You don’t want to tell someone either way how to run their lives, you know. You don’t want to go up to someone and say, ‘You must have a career; you’re not a real woman,’ and you don’t want to go up to a woman and say ‘You must have children, or you’re not a real woman.’ Either way is, in my opinion, still limiting. And my book, if it could say anything, I just want it to say, ‘Think. If your relationship is not giving you what you need, think about it and make that healthy choice.’”

It’s making these healthy, often difficult, choices that is at the heart of “Proper Secrets,” and part of what sets it apart from many of the other romance-novel offerings to women these days. Speaking about “Twilight” in particular, Francis says, “There was no real Bella there (in ‘Twilight’), apart from ‘I like to read books.’” Francis “was fascinated by the chords (Bella) was striking — with young girls especially. It’s fascinating. It’s unrealistic, but it’s fascinating.” “Proper Secrets” partially “came from a lot of the reaction I was seeing to books like ‘Twilight,’ for instance, where people, especially women, were craving romances that were more like addiction instead of healthy, normal relationships.” “Proper Secrets” and “Twilight” overlap in one area, a gripping love story, but elsewhere? “Proper Secrets” pulls far away with a strong, developed, admirable female lead and character development, but it still retains the fast-paced excitement needed for a good read.

Contact Tyler Allen at tallen@dailycal.org.

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Sasha Chebil/Staff

As he is a key representative from digital press beside three panelists still dedicated to printed works, it came as no surprise that Jon Fine, the director of Author and Publishing Relations for Amazon, received the brunt of the snide comments dealt at digi.lit, Litquake’s first digital literary conference.

The conference aimed to demystify the rapidly developing realm of digital publishing by featuring panels consisting of authors (both self-published and those represented by large houses), publishers and booksellers of both print and digital works. By juxtaposing their expectedly opposing views on the future of the industry, it became clear that all are surprisingly optimistic for the future of the publishing industry and the rising dependency on e-books. This panel on “The Future of Publishing” — in which moderator Brad Stone expressed the optimism in the absence of a question mark after the title — included Fine, the endearing Isaac Fitzgerald from McSweeney’s, a local publishing house and Charlie Winton of Counterpoint Press.

Fitzgerald was the first to curtail the potential animosity, noting his confidence about the future of the field and recognizing that it is “incredibly arrogant to think we’re the generation to crash storytelling.” Though Amazon and the e-book industry as a whole are typically discredited due to their low author salaries and occasional lack of quality, Fitzgerald maintains that he cannot “knock something” that allows authors to earn some money from their works denied by traditional publishing.

Amazon and the development of the e-book should be looked as a “proliferation of opportunity” to both produce and consume information rather than a destruction of the publication industry. Fine convinced the audience that with digital publications, “everybody and anybody can be an author.” The switch to digital publishing reduces the reliance on publishing companies, allowing for increased information on the market and giving readers more options.

However, when Stone asked Winton if he would be comfortable living in a world in which Amazon occupies “every square of the publishing chess board,” the tone shifted from one of cordiality to hostility. Winton moved from his rather passive acceptance of Fine’s claims to question what Amazon is doing to “promote the value” of intellectual property and its cost and creation. Fine assured Winton that Amazon does not devalue intellectual property from the authors’ standpoint and also argued that Amazon allows for an increased level of “discoverability” — which, although distinctly different from that of traditional publishing, continues to promote the value of intellectual works by connecting readers with quality material in a never-ending sea of information.

The panel eventually reached a common consensus that more is in fact better, and the often disdained e-publishing industry is allowing for that increase in information. While the panels throughout the day covered varied aspects of the changing industry, the combination of opposition and agreement found in this individual panel seemed to be reflective of the majority of the day’s presentations.

Contact Sasha Chebil at schebil@dailycal.org.

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Mary Zheng/Staff

In the technology boom that was the ’90s, the Bay Area was buzzing with innovative start-ups, emerging IT companies and Silicon Valley excitement. Hidden in this expansive push toward the future of the tech world was a small community of San Francisco bookworms hungry for a city that had once been the pinnacle of the literary landscape. Enter Jack Boulware, one of the co-founders of Litquake. Litquake, a literary festival that began in the late ’90s, has now developed into a well-curated program of readings, conferences and talks. In an interview with The Daily Californian, Boulware talks about the changing world of publishing, the future of journalism and his love for the spirit of the Bay Area.

On the humble beginnings of Litquake: Litquake began in 1999 as a one-day festival called Litstock in Golden Gate Park. A small group of writers brainstormed this idea at the Edinburgh Castle, a Scottish pub in the Tenderloin, which at the time was hosting literary readings. One of the reasons we wanted to create a new festival was because in 1999, nobody in the Bay Area seemed at all interested in literature. We folded the festival when the economy crashed. But people liked the idea, and a year later, Jane (Ganahl, co-founder of Litquake) and I put together a larger committee and relaunched it as Litquake.

On the development of the festival: We had capped the festival at nine days total for some years, but we have added more programming throughout the year. We’ve launched a free podcast of live recordings from our archives, increased our programming for teens and expanded to include more national and international authors. We have franchised our closing night Lit Crawl (literary pub crawl) to several cities throughout the U.S. as well as London. And we have also forged sustainable partnerships with so many other arts and cultural organizations that, in some ways, the end result truly is a group effort from the entire Bay Area community.

On the so-called demise of publishing and journalism: People will always want to read physical books. E-books are only 20 percent of the total market, and that number seems to be holding for the moment. Journalism, however, is undergoing a massive change. It’s much easier to consume news online than via physical papers and magazines. I personally believe that people are not stupid, and they will naturally gravitate to a more curated news experience as opposed to “10 Photos of Cats Yawning” types of content. As with the music industry, the creative people are getting shafted right now. A magazine article that I would be paid thousands for in the 1990s would be a 300-word online story today. The pay would be abysmal, and the only standard for quality is the number of comments and shares via social networks. I hope that changes.

On what to expect at Litquake’s Digital Publishing Conference: The Bay Area is one of the country’s largest markets for books and reading. We are the acknowledged hub of technology. But there’s never been a local event that explores this intersection of both traditional publishing and digital publishing. Many people have asked Litquake over the years, “Where is the industry headed? How can I get published?” So in a way, we launched the digi.lit conference to learn why. We’ve assembled a stellar group of both traditional and digital publishing experts, authors, agents and booksellers to explore the future of how we read and write. We want to avoid the hype and hyperbole of many such conferences and give people some straight information … on where this intersection of traditional and new may lead.

On his love for the spirit of the Bay Area: Some people have said that Litquake could not have emerged in other cities. From the beginning, we were an all-volunteer organization, and for the most part, we still are. That’s a very Bay Area thing — to embark upon a project because you’re vastly interested in doing so and not just because it comes with a dental plan. The city is … the birthplace of blue jeans, television, Corn Nuts, slot machines, the fortune cookie, Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” mass-produced LSD, rock posters, personal computers and so many other things. I think once I start talking about Corn Nuts and LSD, it’s probably time to stop. Thanks for doing this.

Litquake will host digi.lit, a one-day conference that attempts to demystify the new digital publishing landscape by putting attendees in the same room with representatives from fifteen traditional and non-traditional publishers, on June 29 at SPUR Urban Center. The event will feature successful authors, respected agents and editors, graphic designers, marketers, and booksellers with a roster that includes Jon Fine (director of author and publisher relations at Amazon), author Neal Pollack, Salon and New York Times literary critic Laura Miller, Stanford professor, author and blogger Keith Devlin, authors from The Atavist and TED Books, Brook Warner of SheWrites, plus literary agents April Eberhard, Laurie McClean and Ted Weinstein as well as representatives from Chronicle Books, McSweeney’s, Wattpad, Byliner, Blurb and more. 

Tickets are priced at $225.00. To learn more, visit www.litquake.org/digilit.

Contact Addy Bhasin at abhasin@dailycal.org.

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Published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl and Other Poems” is City Lights Bookstore’s most famous title. With its frank and vivid descriptions of drug use, “pubic beards” and people “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists,” “Howl” garnered national attention and notoriety for Ginsberg and City Lights. The success of “Howl” and its riotous effect on literary censorship reflects the fundamental anti-authoritarian, free-speech, fuck-the-system philosophy at City Lights’ core.

City Lights is celebrating its 60th birthday this Sunday with a party in Jack Kerouac Alley, where there will be music, flash readings and special in-store discounts. Founded in 1953, City Lights began as the nation’s first all-paperback bookstore with an all-access inclusionary vision. What once served as a space for Beat literature forerunners like Ginsberg, Kerouac, Gregory Corso and William S. Burroughs to freely express their radical ideas, City Lights continues to function as “a literary meeting place” — as its masthead still proclaims.

Although City Lights remains at its original location in the heart of North Beach, the bookstore’s initial modest-sized storefront has expanded to now occupy three floors of the entire building. It carries a mix of paperback books and hardcovers from both major and independent publishers, including City Lights’ own publishing house, which is two years younger than its bookstore counterpart.

City Lights Executive Director Elaine Katzenberger explained the need for the bookstore’s corporate side to balance its “funky independent side,” which has dwindled comparatively since the ’80s. She asserted that “changes in the book industry sort of mean that if you’re going to survive, you have to actually learn how to run a business too. So we’ve all had to learn that.”

Still, Katzenberger assured, “I would say in terms of the ethos and the aesthetics and the spirit of the place — I feel like that remains pretty much untouched.” Katzenberger explained that the core of City Lights adheres largely to founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s principle and vision, which “really had to do with wanting to create a meeting place where people could come and encounter books and magazines and each other in a … populist environment.”

City Lights’ mission is composed, as Katzenberger referred to it, of a “two-sided coin,” with the bookstore and publishing house on either side. Katzenberger said, “The symbiosis of the two projects is part of the genius of why we exist all this time … It really has to do with those ideals about community and open access to ideas and also an open mind about what kind of ideas deserve access.”

While Ginsberg’s “Howl” is a proud symbol for City Lights, Katzenberger explains that there is more to City Lights than its Beat beginnings: “I think sometimes people think that City Lights published the Beats and stopped there, but that’s obviously not true.” The Beats were the counterculture voice of their time, but with each new decade comes a shifting counterculture. In this sense, while Beat poetry is no longer the center of City Lights, contemporary counterculture perspective remains the focal point. As Katzenberger said, “A lot of the sort of protest and resistance movements find ways (into) the books that we publish.” Current publishing endeavors revolve around antiglobalization movements, immigration reform movements and racial issues in America.

The anarchist heart of City Lights, a true literary and political landmark, gives the bookstore its rich history and continuous cultural relevance. The new decade of the beloved independent bookstore marks the persistence of its mission to represent the underrepresented, diversify voices, promote critical cultural thought and provide a crucial alternative to the ideas circulating in mass media.

Contact Denise Lee at deniselee@dailycal.org.

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