Litquake Festival 2025: Program/Session Proposals
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Thank you for your interest in the 2025 Litquake Festival!
Please note: This form is for proposing an entire festival session/program with a slate of participants. If you would like to propose an individual author to participate on Litquake-curated panels, readings, or keynote/headliner sessions, please use this form.
This year's festival will take place October 9–25.
Litquake is committed to championing greater diversity in the literary world and promoting as wide a range of writers as possible. Accordingly, Litquake encourages submissions from authors and curators across any and all backgrounds, especially those who have been historically overlooked by the literary world including (but not limited to) individuals who are BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, and everyone with a story to tell. We also love all genres, approaches, and schools of thought when it comes to storytelling. Just wow us.
What we're looking for:
- Proposals for events with a clear topic and confirmed list of participating authors with a book or other significant publications published since October 2024. Priority will be given to events featuring authors with new books in September/October 2025.
- Speakers who can give a great interpretation of their work to a live audience.
- Please submit a short proposal along with any links to published work or a short excerpt of the work to be featured.
- Not only for locals! We’re opening submissions up to anyone and everyone. If you/your publisher is able to support your travel to the Bay Area, let us know that in the form—we'd love to roll out the welcome mat for you!
- We're particularly interested in proposals addressing cross-genre discussions, conversations on the intersections of literature and contemporary issues (e.g., politics, science/technology, environment/climate), and (for our Writers' Weekend events) sessions exploring elements of the writer's craft.
- Events vary from panel discussions and performances to interactive events and readings. Please look through our festival calendar from 2024 to better understand the range of diverse events we produce.
- Even if you've presented at Litquake many times previously, there's no guarantee that your proposal will be accepted every year; within our limited space and finite resources, we strive to create a balanced program and to make room for new voices and perspectives each year.
Event Details:
- All participants will receive a modest stipend as gratitude for their involvement.
- All participants will have their photos and bios listed online.
- With rare exceptions (at the discretion of Litquake's programming staff), authors are only permitted to appear once during the festival. Please choose wisely when submitting an author as an individual or as part of a proposed program!