Lit Crawl San Francisco 2026: Full Schedule

One of the most anticipated literary nights of the year, Lit Crawl San Francisco is a massive, one-night literary pub crawl through San Francisco’s Mission District on Saturday, October 25th from 5:00-9:00pm. Join us to cap off another great festival, and don’t miss out on the afterparty at Drawing Room Annex!

ATTENTION: We’ve turned off the My Schedule tool as Sched has changed its pay structure recently and it’s no longer feasible for us to use. No RSVPs are necessary, just show up! Seating + space are first come, first serve. Sorry for the confusion!

5:00pm PDT

Spill the TEA: A Tasting Menu of the Untranslatable and Unsayable

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

English is great at absorbing words from other languages, like ‘shadenfreude’ or ‘chutzpah’. But the words you probably know from Transeurasian languages, from Turkic to Slavic, are more ominous: kompromat, horde, vampire.

True, wars, including Russia’s ongoing assault of Ukraine, have dominated our newsfeeds. Luckily, the TEA Collective of Transeurasian Writers & Translators can help us move past the headlines and enrich our vocabulary and understanding of life elsewhere to include joy, camaraderie, and resilience in the face of fear and loss.

The TEA Collective invites you to a literary tea party with stories by mixed-genre writers with roots from Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, and the Armenian Diaspora that put into words what is difficult to say and nearly impossible to translate. We’ll integrate music and "tasting notes," words in other languages hidden under your seats that will help us give voice to experiences and feelings that we didn’t know we had.

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Genre diasporic stories, healing, immigration, memoir, mixed genre, playwriting, translation, poetry, radical joy

5:00pm PDT

SWANA Dykes & Friends: A Literary Rage Party

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Grand Coffee Too (2544 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

What if a book release party was an opportunity for collective catharsis? What if queer and trans writers from the Southwest Asian North African (SWANA) diaspora had the chance to celebrate and shout out their varied voices at this precarious, vulnerable time? Answer: it would be loud and unapologetic and angry AF. Join us in celebrating the SWANA Dykes anthology!

Authors & Performers

Janine Mogannam

Janine Mogannam is a diasporic Palestinian poet, librarian, and literary curator. Her writing has received support from VONA, Kearny Street Workshop, Tin House, and RAWI. Janine’s work can be found or is upcoming in Mizna, Sinister Wisdom, About Place Journal, Foglifter, the anthologies... Read More →

Jaz Sufi

Slammaster, Berkeley Poetry Slam

Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work is published in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and the Poet Laureate of San Ramon on occupied Ohlone land, where... Read More →

Zara Jamshed

Zara Jamshed is a queer, trans, disabled Pakistani and Indian American poet from NYC living in the East Bay. Their debut collection Neither Created Nor Destroyed was a semifinalist for the Pamet River Prize, a finalist for the Stories Award for Poetry, and is available now with Game... Read More →

Mahru Elahi

A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Mahru Elahi’s hybrid prose can be found in the Bellevue Literary Review, Seventh Wave, Foglifter Journal, Black Warrior Review and in Sinister Wisdom’s SWANA Dykes anthology, among other publications. Mahru urges you to act against... Read More →

Arwa Alsamarae

Arwa Alsamarae is an ophthalmologist and writer living in the North Bay. Her work has been featured in MIZNA, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Palette poetry among others. She is co-founder of the Samar Reading Series, a recurrent literary event in San Francisco featuring... Read More →

Saba Keramati

Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from California. She is the author of SELF-MYTHOLOGY (University of Arkansas Press, 2024). She is the poetry editor for Sundog Lit.

Nikki Luna

Nikki Luna is a Lebanese-American poet, multimedia artist, archival researcher and makeup artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Nikki’s work with poetry and archives includes organizing the Mizna Arab Arts’ Writing Collective, teaching writing workshops, and researching at archives... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Grand Coffee Too (2544 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2544 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Genre LGBTQIA+, poetry, SWANA, diasporic stories, book release

6:30pm PDT

API Transmasculine Stories Take the Stage

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT

Et al. etc. (2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Asian and Pacific Islander transmasculine artists take the stage with original work spanning poetry, memoir, storytelling, and embodied performance. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Willy Wilkinson performs “The Poetry of Scars” through Body as Truth, an emerging art form in which the body presents truth as evidence. Voices from the API diaspora explore alignment, inheritance, and connection across cultures and generations.

Authors & Performers

Bobby C.

Bobby C. is an immigrant who grew up in Hong Kong and San Francisco. He is a titleholder, Mr. Transgender San Francisco 2004. He has been a longtime organizer/volunteer for the LGBTQ+ community. Bobby enjoys shooting photos at community events, creating visual art, writing poetry... Read More →

Willy Wilkinson

Willy Wilkinson is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Born on the Edge of Race and Gender, illuminating trans experience from a Chinese American and mixed-heritage perspective. Its second edition arrives this fall. He received an Association of LGBTQ Journalists Award for... Read More →

Prince Canada

Prince (they/he) is a truth-teller, visual artist, and social entrepreneur. Drawing upon their ugly lived experiences, they create prose, poetry, zines, and paintings. He fought personal legal battles in immigration and transgender housing discrimination. They recently opened their... Read More →

Gino Visinia

G7NO is an artist born into music, carrying a natural connection to rhythm, storytelling, and performance from an early age. With more than 10 years as an official recording artist, his journey has evolved from simply creating music to intentionally using his voice as a tool for impact... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Et al. etc. (2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Genre AAPI, mixed genre, LGBTQIA+, diasporic stories

6:30pm PDT

Circle and Fist: Holding Tenderness while Fighting for the World We Need and Deserve

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT

Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

In restorative justice, our hearts expand to hold grief and rage. As artists we also feed fires of hope. This event is a window and the wind through that window, fresh air, breathing together toward freedom for us all, pulling from Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and Indigenous American cultural traditions.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Audience 18+
Genre erotica, fiction, memoir, poetry, women of a certain age, BIPOC, Black culture, diasporic stories, elder wisdom, south asian, indigenous american, healing

6:30pm PDT

CôEm Collective Presents: Monsters, Myths, and Me

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT

Fingersnaps Media Arts

Through themes of creation, ritual, and tradition, these writers trace patterns carried across generations—from our mythical origin, to a lost motherland, to the present day and beyond. This reading invites us to witness how inherited stories—both told and untold—bind us, fracture us, and offer the possibility of new life. It asks: What do we inherit? What do we choose to carry forward? And what do we lay to rest?

Authors & Performers

Vina Vo

Vina Vo is a storyteller, facilitator, and organizer who bridges the cultural and geographic divide caused by displacement and diaspora. She is originally from Little Saigon in Southern California and now calls Hayward home. She is currently working on a collection of essays.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Fingersnaps Media Arts 3527 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Genre southeast asian, intergenerational, diasporic stories

8:00pm PDT

Kitchen Table Presents: On Cookbooks, Poems, and Flock Cameras

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT

Teeth Bar SF (2323 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Teeth Bar SF (2323 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2323 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Genre cultural commentary, healing, diasporic stories, food

5:00pm PDT

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8:00pm PDT

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