Litquake to Host Dorothy Allison Tribute

Sep 17, 2025

Litquake Festival will celebrate the late novelist Dorothy Allison with a marathon reading of her debut novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, on October 12. The San Francisco literary festival has partnered with Allison’s literary estate for the 12-hour, cover-to-cover reading peformance.

Select chapters will also be staged by the theater companies Word for Word, Poltergeist Theatre Project, and Crowded Fire Theater, with direction by Fancypants Productions. The event is co-presented with the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, the GLBT Historical Society, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at SFPL, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture.

This year’s Litquake Festival will take place from October 9–25, throughout the San Francisco area.