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

Grandmas are Griots

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

Medicine for Nightmares (3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

This evening of dynamic writers upholds the traditions of oral storytelling resisting patriarchal violence and white supremacy through sustained culture. From our grandmother's prayers and cherished recipes to writing in conversation with cultural workers. Join Black Freighter Press as we honor matriarchy and movement through embodied practice and collective commitment.

Authors & Performers

melissa charles

mel (she, her) is an educator-organizer of Haitian and Cuban descent who uses expressive writing as an outlet for healing and political education. she is the minister of education and co-founder of a TK-8 full-time liberation school (@916mxa) who has organized and served as a lecturer... Read More →

Nida Liftawiya

Nida Liftawiya is a Palestinian activist, multi-disciplinary artist, social worker + educator. A lifelong creative, her artistry is deeply rooted in the rich heritage, resilience + beauty of her homeland. Through her work, Nida captures the spirit of her people, weaving together visual... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Medicine for Nightmares (3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Genre BIPOC, healing, intergenerational, mixed genre, Black culture

5:00pm PDT

Hope as a Discipline: A Night of Readings with Fourteen Hills

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

Fingersnaps Media Arts

Forging bonds in the local literary scene is the lifeblood of any literary landscape. To bridge the gap between writers and their community, Fourteen Hills: The San Francisco State University Review’s award-winning magazine will host five local contributors from the special feature of its latest issue to uplift the unique voices who contribute to the Bay Area writing community. Join our writers and staff for a night of literary readings that are sure to challenge conventions, subvert entrenched narratives, and push the boundaries of what literature can be!

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Fingersnaps Media Arts 3527 20th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Genre mixed genre, emerging voices

5:00pm PDT

Ruth Asawa SOTA Presents: Morning Star—Teens Speculate Their Tomorrow

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

Ritual Coffee Roasters (1026 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Daring to imagine positive alternatives, teen artists shine a light forward. Writers and artists across disciplines from the Ruth Asawa SF School of the Arts share original work that conveys truth, generates possibility, and transforms their tomorrows. This dynamic event showcases how teens grapple with the intense present and infuse hope into their futures. Come and participate! A Futures Bingo card result in a candy prize.

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Ritual Coffee Roasters (1026 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 1026 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Genre Youth Voices, Youth Readings, mixed genre, audience participation

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

Text Change: Trans Writers on Anything Except Transition

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

Dog Eared Books (900 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

So often, opportunities for trans writers are focused around work about transition, but no more! The amazing breadth and depth of insight trans people possess will be on display as five of the best trans writers in San Francisco share fiction, non-fiction, and poetry on any topic except one.

Authors & Performers

Michal "MJ" Jones

Michal ‘MJ’ Jones (they/he) is a poet, parent, and editor in Oakland, CA. Their debut collection, HOOD VACATIONS, won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award. They are also the author of a chapbook, SOFT ARMOR (2023), from Nomadic Press.

Charlie Jane Anders

writer, buttondown.com/charliejane

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the forthcoming novel Good Things Are Coming Your Way, about vampires and time travel. Until recently she was the science fiction book reviewer for the Washington Post. She is writing a comic book called Star Trek: Zero Point and a weekly newsletter... Read More →

Chino Lee Chung

Chino Lee Chung is a queer and trans Chinese Mexican personal essay writer and is a recipient of the San Jose State Steinbeck Fellowship. His work appears in Gender Queer: voices from beyond the sexual binary, Invitation to Joy – Writer’s Creating in Community and is a featured... Read More →

Sloane Holzer

Sloane Holzer is a writer and artist living in Oakland, California. Her written and creative work has been published in BOMB, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and them. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Dog Eared Books (900 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

PHASE 1

Audience All Ages
Genre LGBTQIA+, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, mixed genre

5:00pm PDT

Who Lies Better Than Writers? Two Truths and a Lie with Sibylline Press

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

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

This fast-paced, fun literary twist on the classic "two truths and a lie" game will introduce you to eleven great new books by fabulous women over fifty. Guess who’s lying and take home a free book!

Authors & Performers

Elaine Elinson

Elinson, former editor of the ACLU News, is coauthor of Wherever There’s a Fight, Gold Medal winner in the California Book Awards and Development Debacle, which was banned by the Marcos dictatorship. Elinson’s writing has appeared in a wide variety of publications from The Nation... Read More →

Marianne Lonsdale

Marianne Lonsdale’s debut novel, When The Road Curves, was published by Sibylline Press in 2026. Her personal essays and poetry have appeared in several print anthologies and various online publications including The New York Times, Literary Mama and Pulse. She’s committed to... Read More →

Jordan Rosenfeld

Author, Sibylline Press

Jordan Rosenfeld is author of 11 books, most recently Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing and the novel Fallout. She’s published widely, from the Atlantic to Scientific American and many more. Learn more about her freelance writing, developmental editing... Read More →

Lesley Miles

Architect Lesley Miles read her first story A London Love Story on a KQED Perspectives segment. It gave her the impetus to start writing about her experiences in Guatemala in the late 1970s that led to genocide in the early 80s. Her book All Things Hidden: A Witness to Paradise Lost... Read More →

Jean Gordon Kocienda

A former geopolitical risk analyst and history researcher, Jean Gordon Kocienda speaks and reads Japanese fluently. Her debut novel, Girl in a Box, based on the life of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), is filled with her original tanka poetry translations. She co-hosts the... Read More →

Pam Troy

Pam Troy is the author of THE NEWCOMERS, a magical realism historic fiction novel and the first in the series “The Chronicles of Touperdu.” She is a longtime resident of San Francisco.

Helen Gladden

Helen Gladden is a retired high school and middle school principal, as well as a former English teacher. She was born and raised in the East Bay, where she currently lives with her husband of forty-two years and their two Golden Retrievers. She enjoys traveling, taking long walks... Read More →

Valerie Saul

Valerie Saul had an unconventional healthcare career in the U.S., New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore, before writing her debut novel, The Badass Widows, a Mystery. (Sibylline Press, 2026) When she’s not writing stories about gutsy older women, she can be found rowing a racing... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Et al. etc. (2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 1

Audience 18+
Genre mixed genre, audience participation, women of a certain age

5:00pm PDT

Without a Net: 20 Super-short, Uncurated, Uncensored, Unrehearsed Pieces, Freshly Written in the Last Hour

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

The Drawing Room: ANNEX (599 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Always wanted to read at Lit Crawl? Here's your chance. Step one...attend the pre-Crawl Tailgate at Page Street SF where you will be given a prompt and 30 minutes to write a no-more-than-2-minute piece on that prompt. (We might also give you a glass of wine if you like.) If you like what you wrote, drop your name into our sorting hat (literary reference there). If you're chosen to be one of our readers (and there will be 20 of you), you'll need to head to the Phase One venue for our Lit Crawl event, Without a Net: 20 Supershort, Uncurated, Uncensored, Unrehearsed Pieces Written in the Last Hour. Don't forget to text your family and friends to let them know you're reading at Lit Crawl!

Saturday October 24, 2026 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
The Drawing Room: ANNEX (599 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

PHASE 1

Audience 18+
Genre tailgate sponsor, mixed genre, memoir, fiction, nonfiction

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

Borrowed Time—with the Lisa Brown & Daniel Handler Residents

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

Blondie's Bar (540 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

An evening of original work from the Lisa Brown & Daniel Handler Residents at the San Francisco Public Library, exploring what is borrowed, what is returned, and what is transformed.

Across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid forms, these writers engage with memory, archives, identity, and the fragile timelines that shape our lives. Rooted in a yearlong residency in support of the public library, this work reflects both personal histories and the collective record.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Blondie's Bar (540 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 540 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Audience 21+
Genre fiction, nonfiction, poetry, hybrid, mixed genre

6:30pm PDT

Celebrating the World in Translation

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

Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative, (3130 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Celebrate the third year of the BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS, bringing you the literatures of the world for our delight! Featuring an editor and contributors to the 2026 edition of this annual anthology, the session will feature poetry and prose from four continents, including work from Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Palestine.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative, (3130 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 3130 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Genre poetry, mixed genre, translation

6:30pm PDT

Center for the Art of Translation Presents: So You Think You Can('t) Translate—Youth Edition!

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

826 Valencia (826 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Budding Bards! Fledgling Wordsmiths! Rising Scribes! Unlock your creativity and share your skills while translating poems from all over the world. No need to be a poet. No second language required. Equipped with a glossary, guided by local translators, and with the encouragement of friends (bring your own!), you’ll dismantle and reassemble a poem in a new language. Translation of poetry by its nature offers multiple possibilities: since there is no single “correct” rendering of a poem, be prepared to share and defend your language choices. Who knows? Maybe it will change your entire relationship with language? With collaboration? With creation? 2025-2027 Poetry Inside Out Teaching Fellows (https://www.catranslation.org/education/teaching-fellowship/) will host this fun workshop and spontaneous performance for youth writers.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
826 Valencia (826 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 826 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Audience All Ages
Genre Youth Voices, translation, mixed genre

6:30pm PDT

It's Never Too Late: Howls from Owls

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

Muddy Waters Café & Lounge

Join the parliament of OWLS (Older Writers' Laboratory) as we celebrate, investigate and illuminate our lives and perspectives as older poets. Be prepared for unexpected revelations, extraordinary histories and audience
participation as we follow in the great San Francisco tradition of murmuring, whispering, enunciating and howling our words out to you in the foggy urban night.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Muddy Waters Café & Lounge 521 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Genre elder wisdom, memoir, mixed genre, poetry

6:30pm PDT

Mesa Refuge Presents: In the Spirit of Kapwa

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

Medicine for Nightmares (3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

This reading includes seven Filipino-American writers, who were brought together through the Helen Toribio Kapwa Fellowship at Point Reyes writing retreat, Mesa Refuge. Kapwa is a Tagalog word that does not have an exact English translation, but describes "the universal truth of interconnectedness and solidarity with all living beings." In the spirit of kapwa, these writers bring into conversation distinct explorations of intergenerational relationships and trauma, mothering, queerness, climate change and the role of colonialism, and mythology.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Medicine for Nightmares (3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Audience All Ages
Genre AAPI, filipinx, environmental, colonialism, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, mixed genre, intergenerational

6:30pm PDT

USF Presents: Emerging Writers Take the Stage

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

The Sycamore (2140 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

We're an all-ages group of grad student writers at the University of San Francisco. We’re putting our non-writing lives on hold for two years while we dig deep into the art world and see what could happen. We experiment and write normal stuff and weird stuff. We have incredible dogs and cats that inspire and terrorize us.

Saturday October 24, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
The Sycamore (2140 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2140 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 2

Audience 18+
Genre erotica, fiction, memoir, poetry, women of a certain age, emerging voices, mixed genre, sponsor

8:00pm PDT

Black Sentimentality of Survival, Song & Overjoy

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

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

Black Sentimentality of Survival, Song & Overjoy is a poetic showcase of an eclectic grouping of multidimensional minds. Heralding from Los Angeles, New York, and the Bay Area, this is a diasporic radical figment of the Black consciousness playing out in real-time. If time is what the Black consciousness even has. We're overjoyed for the counting moments of our breathe. Multidisciplinary in our attack and overjoyed by the audacity of our creations. Overjoyed to be overjoyed and harkening on our survival through poetic sound waves transmitted for ear-hustling pirates looting for the falsehood and overstandings. Tssskkkkk. This is for us, by the utmost shoulder shrug non-shimmying against social or political relevance. Raucous against being endangered. Sentimental for the longing of bearing witness to our greatness. We're shielded from the world's wrongdoings. Cloaked in psychic protection. For the love of living. This is ours...life. Poetry...life. Life........BlLLLLlllLLLLAaaaCCCccckkkkkk.........life.

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Grand Coffee Too (2544 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2544 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Genre mixed genre, poetry, BIPOC, Black culture

8:00pm PDT

CCA Presents: The Last Word is Never the Last

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

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

The final graduating class of California College of the Arts' MFA in Writing takes the Litquake stage for the program's last appearance after decades of nurturing distinctive literary voices. Every generation of writers inherits the world as it is and imagines the world as it might become. In a cultural moment that often rewards speed over reflection and certainty over complexity, these emerging writers remind us that literature remains one of our most powerful ways of paying attention to one another, to history, and to ourselves. Through fiction, memoir, poetry, and hybrid forms, these writers move across borders, histories, families, and imagined futures with wit, ambition, and emotional precision. This is more than a farewell to a beloved program. It is an introduction to the writers who will carry its legacy forward and a reminder literature is always unfinished and always becoming. The last word is never the last.

Authors & Performers

Leela Smelser

Leela Smelser’s truest devotion is Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but he dabbles in poetry and has been known to microdose screenwriting on the side. With a BA in Creative Writing and Classics from Bryn Mawr College, he is now in his second and final year in the CCA MFA Writing program.

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Et al. etc. (2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110) 2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Genre memoir, mixed genre, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, sponsor

8:00pm PDT

Cracking the Code: Tweens & Teens Share Their Life Hacks

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

Muddy Waters Café & Lounge

Our youth are our future. Clear-eyed and unjaded, they hold a special kind of wisdom. Come hear the poems and stories of eight 6th-9th graders as they share their life hacks: clever and moving new ways of living, doing, and being that will make life better for everyone.

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Muddy Waters Café & Lounge 521 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Audience All Ages
Genre Youth Readings, Youth Voices, mixed genre, poetry

8:00pm PDT

Flying Rabbit Presents: It's a Mad Mad Madman World, Madam

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

San Francisco Mime Troupe (855 Treat Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110)

If you’ve been wondering why everyone has been pushing you to accept AI into your everyday life…why there continues to be massive layoffs and rising prices…why humanity is not investing more into the preservation of our planet…You’re not alone. This year, our performers are holding the magnifying glass up to American greed, consumerism, and government and corporate hypocrisy.

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
San Francisco Mime Troupe (855 Treat Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110) 855 Treat Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Genre cultural commentary, mixed genre

8:00pm PDT

Happy Endings (For Real! Probably.)

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

The Drawing Room: ANNEX (599 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

Happy Endings brings together a variety of Bay Area storytellers to explore the outrageous and elusive notion of happiness. Join them tonight (and every second Tuesday at the Make-Out Room) as they tackle this tall order. The audience’s favorite will return or tap a writer they love to take their place.

Authors & Performers

Alexandra Clemente

Alexandra was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She writes about her experience as a Venezuelan living in the diaspora. She's lived in San Francisco for more than a decade. You can find her at aleclemente.com

Rebecca Rubenstein

Rebecca Rubenstein is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. Originally from Chicago, they hold an MFA in Fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars and various words of theirs can be found in The Rumpus, No Contact, X-R-A-Y, and HAD, among others. Their writing has been supported... Read More →

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Drawing Room: ANNEX (599 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)

PHASE 3

Audience 18+
Genre mixed genre

8:00pm PDT

KALW's Crosscurrents Live: Where I'm From

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

Monkeybrains

Where I'm from explores stories of home. Whether it's the heritage people bring to the Bay, or the culture the Bay sends out to the world. Through dynamic performances, insightful conversations, and cinematic music, we'll show you where we're from.

Saturday October 24, 2026 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Monkeybrains 933 Treat Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

PHASE 3

Genre san francisco stories, music, cultural commentary, mixed genre, sponsor

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