Litquake

Liar's Poker meets The Social Network in this irreverent exposé of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio García Martínez, a former Twitter advisor, Facebook product manager, and startup founder/CEO. With Peter Hartlaub (San Francisco Chronicle). $15 advance or at the door

In Chaos Monkeys, the author unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital "privacy," García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. 

Co-presented by RADAR Productions

Award-winning novelist, memoirist, poet, editor, arts organizer, teacher, performer—what has Michelle Tea NOT accomplished? She may have moved to Los Angeles, but tonight she returns to San Francisco to share stories and discuss her latest book, Black Wave, with the inimitable Daniel Handler. $15 in advance or $20 at the door

“I think people are waking up to the fact that Michelle Tea is a major writer and a titanic figure in the Bay Area lit scene,” says Handler. “It’s one of the few things I’ve been right about in the past 20 years.” —Daniel Handler

"Brave and unexpectedly wise...Michelle Tea is a goddess." —San Francisco Examiner
“Raucous…[and] unapologetically raw.” —The New York Times 

Fiction doesn’t have the market cornered on fantastical tales. How about homemade rockets firing into the stratosphere? Robots that may eventually enslave us? Bathrooms that require neither plumbing nor sewage? These authors discuss: Julian Guthrie (How to Make a Spaceship), Jonathon Keats (You Belong to the Universe), and John Markoff (Machines of Loving Grace), and Greg Milner (Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology). $10 advance or $15 at the door

Co-presented by California Humanities

In honor of the centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes, Litquake hosts two conversations with four recipients: Jane Smiley (1992, fiction) with Robert Hass (2008, poetry); and Richard Rhodes (1986, nonfiction) with T.J. Stiles (2010, biography; 2016, history). Topics certain to be covered include: what is the intersection between fiction and poetry? How much research is enough, and is there ever too much? And how did winning the highest literary prize in the U.S. change their lives? $10 advance or $15 at the door

Author Kevin Baker (America the Ingenious) explores 76 of the most intriguing, important, and ingenious inventions realized in America, from the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater to the oil rig, the electric sewing machine, and the telephone. In conversation with author and Arc Programs CEO David Ewing Duncan.
$10 in advance or $15 at the door 

Even today, the legend of San Francisco-born Bruce Lee still resonates around the world, his image as popular as Bob Marley or Che Guevara. Journalist Charles Russo speaks and shows rare photos from Striking Distance, which chronicles a widely unknown history of Bruce Lee and the Bay Area's pioneering 1960s martial arts scene. $10

In the spring of 1959, 18-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast’s fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a Bay Area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown’s aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter. Regarded by some as a brash loudmouth and by others as a dynamic visionary, Bruce spent his first few years back in America advocating a more modern approach to the martial arts and showing little regard for the damaged egos left in his wake. 

In the Chinese calendar, 1964 was the Year of the Green Dragon. It would be a challenging and eventful year for Bruce. He would broadcast his dissenting view before the first great international martial arts gathering and then defend it by facing down Chinatown’s young ace kung fu practitioner in a legendary behind-closed-doors high noon–style showdown.