San Francisco Litquake

Litquake (October 1-9, 2010), San Francisco’s literary festival showcases hundreds of Bay Area writers for a week of readings, discussions, films, cross-media happenings and more

I spent an amazing hour with authors and poets in front of 250 awesome middle grade students earlier this week, at the San Francisco Main Library. I was asked to present at Kidquake, which is a part of San Francisco's annual Literary Festival called Litquake. Kidquake is festival-within-a-festival and was launched in 2004 as organizers decided theyneeded more of a children’s component to the event. 

Along with me was a talented husband wife team, Jon Voelkel and  Pamela Craik Voelkel who gave an exciting and informative look at their hot new book MIDDLEWORLD, a fast paced adventure story about archaeology and Mayan mythology. The three students from the Creative Writing Department at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts (SOTA) were unbelievably talented -- just 15-17 years old, their poetry was moving, smart and deeply insightful. They went on to give poetry workshops to many of the students. It reminded me that I loved writing poetry in middle school -- it's wonderful way to have kids connect with themselves by putting thought to paper.

The kids asked amazing questions and were fun to meet!