FESTIVAL FEATURE

We're coming to the close of the Litquake festival, here in San Francisco, and it's been a hectic week of panels, readings and workshops. Litquake is the West Coast's largest independent literary festival, with over 450 authors taking part this year so we're honored that the anthology has been chosen as one of the features of the final night celebrations (last year's final night was attended by over 1,000 people).

Four of the poets from the anthology (Ravi Chandra, Minal Hajratwala, Tanuja Mehrotra, and myself) will be reading at the Bollyhood Cafe, San Francisco's premier new desi hot spot. We've also invited along some local South Asian American non-poets to join us for the occasion, including the short story writer Moazzam Sheikh, novelist Balaji Venkateswaran, Falu Bakrani, who'll be reading from her book on the cultural politics of the Bhangra/ “Asian Underground” music scenes in Britain, and Minal (again!) reading from her forthcoming non-fiction book about her family: "Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

Congratulations to Minal on her new book! (checkout Minal's website for news on the book and her blog: http://www.minalhajratwala.com/)

Here are more details of the anthology reading at Litquake:

WRITING THE LINES OF OUR HANDS: An Evening with South Asian American authors
Saturday 11 October: 7:15 pm
Bollyhood Cafe (3372 19th St)
between Capp St & Mission St)
San Francisco, CA 94110

If you're in the area, do join us!
LITQUAKE Festival site: http://www.litquake.org/the-festival/lit-crawl-2008/

- Pireeni