How to Make Readings Not Boring
An Oral History of Lit Crawls Across the Country
Over the last decade Lit Crawl—which started in San Francisco—has expanded to nine cities, with more added each year. Essentially an act of literary bar-hopping, the Lit Crawls have become bookish institutions in their respective cities, an ideal way for local literary communities to unite, and drink, and read. What follows is a brief history of the Lit Crawl, from across the country.
Describe your first experience with Lit Crawl...
Jack Boulware (cofounder and Executive Director of Litquake): This is sort of the apocryphal Lit Crawl tale, and it happened in 2004, the first year we did it in San Francisco. The event was scheduled to be in a bar in the Mission District, which shall go unnamed, and was curated by the MacAdam/Cage publishing house. We all assembled inside the pub and it was already packed with rowdy drunk people who of course had no knowledge there was a Lit Crawl. We asked the staff to turn down the music, and they just stared at us and said we needed to talk to the manager, who was not there. There were about five readers, and a cluster of people who wanted to hear them. TV screens were locked on some kind of game, the music was blasting. We were trapped. And then, hats off to the late David Poindexter, publisher of MacAdam, he grabbed a chair and hoisted it over his head, and we all followed him through the bar and out onto the sidewalk, and he sat it down, and each writer stood on top of the chair, in front of a janitorial supply store, and read from their work. No microphone, people just gathered around, drinks in their hands, and listened to the readings. Cars were slowing down, and people were hanging out the windows, asking what’s going on. Somebody shouted, “It’s a literary reading!” It was so raw, pure. I’ll never forget it.
What prompted you to start Lit Crawl in San Francisco?
Jack: In 2004 Litquake entered into discussions on launching some type of neighborhood crawl of literary events, inspired by the successful formats of both South by Southwest and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The original concept was to do this in North Beach, but we realized the Mission District was seeing more foot traffic, and also featured a lot more potential venues. So we decided to set it in the Mission, along the Valencia corridor.
Jen Siraganian (Managing Director of Litquake, which begins today in San Francisco): I had moved to the West Coast from Massachusetts, and I had no friends. I realized that I was living in the Mission District, in the coolest city, so I had to up my game. I thought why aren’t I joining this crazy event where literary lovers run around like harpies carrying bright colored maps? So I joined the madness.
What was the first year like?
Jack: The first Lit Crawl was very modest, maybe 15 or 20 events, and for some reason we held it in the middle of Litquake week. I don’t know what we were thinking. After the first year, it was pretty obvious how overwhelming the experience is, both to attend and also produce. So the next year we moved it to closing night of the festival, and that’s where it’s been ever since. It’s such a blowout, you can’t hope to follow it with any other programming.
How has the Crawl changed since that first year?
Jack: In San Francisco, at least, it’s grown into a full on Delta Force effort. We have a Crawl production committee that works on just the Lit Crawl for most of the year. The literary community is so large and diverse here, we’ve had to continually expand the number of events, and we always strive to improve the experience for people. It’s always a work in progress right up to the starting phase, as things are shifting constantly. It’s really quite a challenge at times, but the end result is thousands of people out on the streets having a great time in the name of literature.
Jen: The first year I volunteered, there were 47 events, then it ballooned to 59 in 2009, 65 in 2010, 77 in 2011, 84 in 2012, 79 in 2013, and then coordinators Travis Peterson and Lisa Church threw the monster of all Lit Crawls with 101 events in 2014.
How does San Francisco’s personality inform the Lit Crawl?
Jack: San Francisco was a great city to launch this concept, everybody seemed to get it immediately. There’s a long history here of people assembling around creative ventures, from hippie music concerts and beat poetry performances, to Critical Mass bike rides and drunken Santas swarming the streets. Everybody gets to participate in some way, whether it’s organizing a reading, or reading from your work, or running down the sidewalk from event to event.
Funniest (or most bizarre) San Fran Lit Crawl moment?
Jen: Conspiracy of Beards, a 30-member male choir that performs a cappella arrangements of Leonard Cohen songs, at Fellow Barber, a barbershop offering men’s cuts and straight-razor shaves.
Quirkiest venue at your Crawl?
Jack: Mission Police Station. Good Vibrations sex shop. Furniture showrooms… The beekeeping supply store, with live chickens running about.
What are you most excited about at this year’s Lit Crawl?
Jen: ”Bay Area Young Survivors: Sex, Drugs, and Mammary Glands” at Public Works when a San Francisco sex worker, a Stanford professor, and other members of an action group for young women with breast cancer. But “Troubling the Bay: Trans and Genderqueer Poets” at Time Frame will be awesome too.
What prompted you to start a Lit Crawl in your city?
Sally Shore (project director/cofounder of Lit Crawl LA): Conrad and I were inspired after having attended three LA literary events in a row that that featured the same twenty- and thirty-something white hipster writers. We wanted to bring an event to LA that was more reflective of the totality of the LA literary community.
Conrad Romo (cofounder and business relations manager of Lit Crawl LA): I went to a couple things that were called “crawls” in the Silverlake, but they took place in one venue only. They had a good attendance and good writers but I felt they didn’t fully represent LA authors/writers.
How has the Crawl changed since that first year?
Sally: Going into year three, we will be at three rounds, plus an opening and closing event, with 38+ venues and additional outdoor spaces. The interest and excitement continues to grow, and we anticipate that we’ll likely have to follow the New York model and split into two crawls going into 2016-2017.
How does LA’s personality inform its Lit Crawl?
Conrad: Ours is a city of many colors and persuasions, and Lit Crawl LA is dedicated to featuring as much variety at our event as possible. This year, that includes cartoonists of color who will read and project images of their stories on a screen; a group of working musicians who are also writers; and a group of blind and deaf writers who will represent their respective communities.
Funniest (or most bizarre) Lit Crawl moment in your city.
Sally: Last year, I got an 11pm call two nights before the Crawl from one of our restaurant venues—profusely apologizing that they had suffered a fire and would have to back out at the last minute. We assured them that our biggest concern was their safety and we could (and did) make other arrangements (Happy ending: they are back this year with a beautifully remodeled spaced, hosting two rounds).
What are you most excited about at this year’s Lit Crawl?
Sally: I’m looking forward to partnering with the Metropolitan Water District on water conservation/drought awareness, and a new presenting group of homeless memoirists.
Conrad: I’m looking forward to the musicians—I’m a big fan of Johnette Napolitano, and they are going to all play a song together. The young poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, is also fantastic and she’ll be part of the bus venue.
Steph Opitz is the literary director of the Texas Book Festival, and the cocoordinator of Lit Crawl Austin (with Jill Meyers).
Describe your first experience with Lit Crawl.
Jill Meyers (cofounder of A Strange Object, founder of Lit Crawl Austin): My first experience of the Crawl was in San Francisco—I saw a fast-paced, hilarious, dazzling show from the Writers’ Grotto. There was one story about the writer experiencing microgravity training: it was intense. The bar was packed; there were people crammed in everywhere, sitting on the floor, on the side of the stage, just hanging on to the writers’ words. And then after that show, we were off, racing to get to the next venue, the next show.
Steph Opitz (literary director of the Texas Book Festival, cocoordinator of Lit Crawl Austin): I attended Lit Crawl NYC in 2010. I went with some non-publishing friends (NPFs) who couldn’t be bothered to go to readings but loved the idea of a bar crawl in the East Village/L.E.S. I think we ended up just going to two phases, but I was hooked, and my NPFs kept coming back with me over the years, to Brooklyn, too!
What prompted you to start a Lit Crawl in Austin?
Jill: The spirit of Lit Crawl—irreverent, egalitarian, upforanything—struck me as very Austin. At the time, I was hosting launch parties for the magazine I edited every quarter; there were also a bunch of reading series and storytelling shows that were starting up in town. The showrunners and hosts had gotten together and discussed the possibility of doing a single night with all of our shows at different bars. It seemed like a very good idea to connect something like that with the Texas Book Festival, so that in addition to drawing on all our great local writers, we could also program shows with visiting national writers.
What was the first year Lit Crawl in Austin like?
Jill: We were a bit overwhelmed by the crowds and enthusiasm. We hosted Chuck Palahniuk at a divey outdoor music venue called the Scoot Inn, and 500 people showed up. There was someone appointed to throw inflated skeletons into the crowd from the stage. It was a blast.
How has the Crawl changed since that first year?
Steph: I know that it’s become physically larger, and that bigger name authors have participated more and more, and more people are showing up. Two years ago one of the bars told me we get a bigger crowd than SXSW, of course, I did have the creator and producer of Drunk History there doing Drunk Literary History, so, that was an exceptional crowd.
How does Austin's personality inform its Lit Crawl?
Jill: Austin is an open, inclusive, and friendly literary community. Austinites really get behind new literary ventures and people trying out new ideas (like opening an indie bookstore, starting up a new publication, or developing a literary walking tour). We love the new and, yeah, keeping it weird as well. At Lit Crawl, we strive for a good representation of the literary programming that occurs in the city yearround, and we seek to bring in writers of all backgrounds and walks of life, from MFA students to workingclass queer writers to bilingual novelists.
Funniest (or most bizarre) Lit Crawl moment in your city?
Steph: Probably the Drunk History moment, above mentioned. Derek Waters got drunk crowd members to reenact The Giving Tree.
Quirkiest venue at your Crawl.
Jill: Probably the Texas State Cemetery: twenty-two rolling acres crammed with monuments and cenotaphs, the final resting place of legendary Texans such as Stephen F. Austin, Ann Richards, J. Frank Dobie, James Michener, and many more. We host YA events there and ask everyone to bring a flashlight—graveyards get dark!
Steph: Yeah, I asked RL Stine to tell ghost stories there, 1,500 people showed up.
What are you most excited about at this year’s Lit Crawl?
Jill: There’s something special we’ve put together called Lit Crawl Against Humanity. It’s a literaryfocused version of the Cards Against Humanity game, with a great lineup of authors as players. We’re anticipating people will be shocked, titillated (maybe?), and hopefully amused.
Steph: And, the list of participants is bonkers: Chuck Palahniuk, Saeed Jones, Geoff Dyer, Attica Locke, Jonathan Lethem, Linda Gray, Sloane Crosley, Kelly Link, and many more
Describe your first experience with Lit Crawl.
Mette Risa (founder of Lit Crawl London): My first experience with the Lit Crawl was in San Francisco in 2010. Having moved to San Francisco earlier that year, I had signed up as a volunteer for Litquake to see if I could meet some interesting people who shared my interest in literature and live events. The festival was great, I volunteered at as many events as I could manage. The Lit Crawl seemed almost overwhelming though, so many events and venues all at the same time, and people. It struck me as a bit crazy to even try to do anything like it, but it seemed to work. And people were happy. The following year I was more involved, both with the main festival and the Lit Crawl, and got to see how it actually works.
What was the first year Lit Crawl in London?
The first year I had help from a publicist to put it all together, and we had six venues, two in each phase. I had chosen to have it in Central London, in Soho and around Charing Cross Road where all the bookshops are, and it proved tricky to find venues that would let us use their space for free. We had a great mix of events though. Punk poetry, the soontobe Booker Prize winner, poets that had to be persuaded to stand on a chair so people could see and hear them. The first phase wasn’t as busy as I had hoped, but by the last phase we had to turn people away, there wasn’t enough space.
How has the Crawl changed since that first year?
I decided to move the Crawl to a different neighborhood, Peckham, for the second year, as it is a lot more like the Mission District in San Francisco. Until recently it has been a more affordable part of London, and it has a great community spirit and lots of independent venues. From the standard bookshops and bars/pubs, to gyms, a brewery and an arcade bar, almost every venue I have approached to host an event has said yes. And we’re growing, fast. This year we’ll have 15 or 16 events, and hopefully quite a lot more than that next year again.
Funniest (or most bizarre) Lit Crawl moment in London.
That must be from the first Lit Crawl, at a busy pub in Soho. A poet, reluctant to get up on the chair to read his poem about Mars, proceeded to spellbind everyone there, even the man (probably on a stag do) with a white bra on his head.
Describe your first experience with Lit Crawl.
Suzanne Russo (Director of Lit Crawl National, founder of Lit Crawl in NYC): When I was living in San Francisco many moons ago, I randomly heard about this thing called “Lit Crawl,” and knew I had to check it out. I dragged a couple of nonbookish friends, hit a couple of readings, and was hooked. That was probably the second or third Lit Crawl, and even then it was clear this concept was something special. I eagerly filled out a form on the Litquake website, and found myself joining the Litquake committee.
Paul W. Morris (Director of Literary Programs at PEN American; early Lit Crawl NYC curator): I knew Suzanne Russo when I was at BOMB Magazine and she asked if I’d like to curate a slot. I said of course, and tried to think of something inventive and fun that would help make new again many of BOMB’s classic interviews from the 80s and 90s. I hosted the first of what would become a recurring Lit Crawl event called “BOMBaoke!” which used a karaoke model and welcomed audience participation, with celebrity literary judges evaluating performances. Guests chose a BOMB interview script no more than three minutes long to perform/act out, taking from pairings such as Jeffrey Eugenides & Jonathan Safran Foer, Patti Smith & Thurston Moore, Jonathan Franzen and Donald Antrim, and Kiki Smith & Chuck Close, to name a few.
What prompted you to start (or get involved with) a Lit Crawl in your city?
Suzanne: I was only with Litquake a year before I moved to New York. One day, shortly after I’d finished my MA and was trying to figure out what to do next, I weighed in on some email thread about San Francisco’s literary world versus New York. Another NYC-based Litquaker chimed in, and soon Jane, Litquake’s cofounder, added that “Todd (Zuniga, of Literary Death Match) and Suzanne should bring Litquake to New York.” I think she might have been joking, but we rolled with it anyway, and decided that the Crawl was the easiest aspect to replicate. Todd and I worked together on the first two Crawls before he left New York.
Paul: See above. Also, Todd Zuniga and I were drinking buddies at the time, on the literary party circuit nonstop, so it was just a natural extension of the “work” we did.
What was the first NYC Lit Crawl like?
Suzanne: This being the first ever Lit Crawl outside San Francisco, we were scrappy to say the least. We had a free WordPress website and a google map (designed for free) with some strange medieval-looking clipart, which I somehow convinced an East Village copy shop to print for free in exchange for a logo.
Paul: I remember that first year being VERY ambitious, like you had to get on a subway from the LES and head to Williamsburg for the final phase, Literary Death Match, which was then followed by the after-party. I don’t think anyone knew any better, but every venue was packed, despite it being a bit disorganized. All part of the fun!
How has the Crawl changed since that first year?
Suzanne: After our adventures in Williamsburg that first year, we tightened up the Crawl route, so that events were closer together in each phase, even as we grew and added more and more events. Then one day, Paul Morris suggested that a Lit Crawl Brooklyn would be a logical next step, since the borough is swarming with writers. The first Lit Crawl Brooklyn brought a whole new wave of curators, and a whole different energy.
Paul: I was still living in Manhattan, where I’d been living for many years, but all my friends were in Brooklyn. All my free time was spent there, my girlfriend had even moved there, and BOMB was based in Fort Greene. I was only ever in Manhattan to sleep. So I was like, “Why aren’t we doing a Lit Crawl in Brooklyn?” It seemed like such a natural fit because the borders between neighborhoods like Ft. Greene, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens are so porous, with multiple bars basically next to each other, especially on Smith Street.
Funniest (or most bizarre) Lit Crawl moment in NYC.
Suzanne: A few years back, I stopped into a venue that shall not named and talked with a dude named “Flash” about hosting a Crawl event. Flash agreed that, though the venue usually charged for events, he would be happy to allow Crawl attendees to enter for free. He confirmed that sentiment several times leading up to the Crawl, but when we arrived that night, Flash had disappeared, and two big guys at the door were charging. Lit Crawl being a strictly free event, we wanted no part of that, so we stopped into the bar next door and asked the bartender if we might read on the street. The bartender was (naturally) a poet, and all for our impromptu reading. One by one, our authors gamely climbed up onto a planter box and read to an evergrowing crowd of rapt Crawl attendees and curious passers by—while the bouncers at the venue looked angrily on.
Quirkiest venue at your Crawl.
Suzanne: A tattoo parlor, a laundromat, and Brooklyn’s quirky Micro Museum all stand out as favorites.
Paul: A recent Lit Crawl Manhattan featured a reading about sex in the Lower East Side sex shop, Babeland.
This year’s Lit Crawl NYC takes place at HousingWorks, October 21st.
What prompted you to launch this year’s inaugural Lit Crawl in Portland?
Heather Brown (Lit Crawl Portland Coordinator): I was talking with Amanda Bullock one day about Wordstock, which is newly launching under her direction as a project of Literary Arts in Portland. She was thinking about ways to bring Lit Crawl to Portland in conjunction with Wordstock, and I offered to organize—the rest is (so far, a very short) history!
How is it going so far?
So far it’s going pretty well (fingers crossed)! We’re shooting for around eight venues with two phases each, with an after party. Portland has a dense, rich literary community, and lots of people are coming into town for Wordstock, so we’ve got plenty of program pitches…
How will Portland’s personality inform this Lit Crawl?
With the number of readings and literary events already going on in Portland, I sometimes feel like every week is its own Lit Crawl! Portland’s also very supportive of the arts in all forms. There’s a good amount of cross disciplinary collaboration that I hope to see showcased at our Lit Crawl. There’s also a lot of coffee, donuts, beer, bikes, and weirdness that adds a unique Portland flavor to whatever happens here.
Quirkiest venue at your Crawl.
This is still a tossup, but maybe the Primal Screens t-shirt shop or the Jolly Roger pirate bar! Mother Foucault’s bookshop is certainly the quirkiest book-related venue. We’re really excited that they’re a central piece. Oh, we’ve also got a hops grow-room reserved at a local brewery. That will probably be fun…
Feature image by Bill Adams.
