On October 24, 2020, there will be a virtual poetry marathon reading, Beast Crawl Uprising.
“Beast Generation culture exploded in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 2000s. By 2012, we, Beast Generation writers, lived a never-ending literary feast. We gathered in the Mission, at the street corners (16th and Mission), in a former voodoo and black magic temple Viracocha, Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, in the bars like Amnesia and Make Out Room or Nick’s Lounge in Berkeley. They read poetry and prose, played music and acted at festivals and happenings like Bay Area Generations, Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, Saturday Night Special, Quiet Lightning, Get Lit, Tourette’s Without Regrets, Poetry Flash, Donde Esta Mi Gente, Perfectly Queer, The Naked Bulb, Skinless, Swill, Word Performances, Literary Speakeasy, LitCrawl, Literary Death Match, and organizations like Nomadic Press, Poetry Flash, Small Press Distribution, Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, Kundiman, Kearney St Workshop, Manic D Press, Be About It Press, Milvia Street, Liminal Space, Foglifter Journal, the SF Creative Writing Institute, the East Bay Review, Full of Crow, Pandemonium Press. And with many MANY of these writers taking to the road to read with poets in Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pittsburg, Albuquerque New York, Paris, Mexico City, Rabat and others. It was a loud and fun family, with a sense of purpose and belonging.
The Beast Crawl was born in 2012 in Oakland CA to establish an annual gathering of this tribe in one region at one time in the East Bay (pig latin for “Beast”) to celebrate the merging of homegrown literary talent with the other kindred Beasts across the world. With this event, the East Bay emerged as a hotbed of raw, diverse literary talent with venues such as the Awaken Cafe, Bench & Bar, Chapter 510, the Dept. of Make Believe, the Creative Growth Center, Classic Cars West, Era Art Bar, Econojam Records, Feelmore 510, The Legionairre, Telegraph Beer Garden, Farley’s East, EM Wolfman Books, The Golden Bull, Laurel Books, The Layover Lounge, The New Parkway, Oaklandish, Kingston 11, Spice Monkey, The Starline Social Club, Sweet Bar, The Octopus Literary Salon, Radio Bar, and Woods Brewing Company hosting new up and coming authors.
By 2020, with many of the venues closed or out of business, festivals and readings canceled by the pandemic, depression, fires and smoke, the Beasts might have lost a platform but not their voice. We will join forces again on October 24, 2020, and speak up online. Join us for a whole day marathon on a YouTube channel of one of San Francisco’s oldest indie bookstores, Globus Books. The city will live up to its tradition: LitCrawl and Bay Area Poetry festival will be bringing more voices to you that very day. Let’s read like it is 2012!
With a week before the historic election, our country, state and city face a political, economic and environmental crisis. The arts, literature and poetry are here to do what they always do: offer humanity. Our land is on fire, the plague is near and tyrants are at large but our spirits soar and are invincible. Long live Poetry!” -Zarina Zabrisky, Globus Books
Reading:
Youssef Alaoui
Lynn Alexander
Kyrsten Bean
Hugh Behm-Steinberg
Steven Black
Pam Benjamin
Kwan Booth
Mya Byrne
Wolfgang Carstens
MK Chavez
Missy Church
Joe Clifford
Sharon Coleman
Paul Corman-Roberts
Sean Craven
Cassandra Dallett
Rohan DaCosta
Jenee Darden
Natasha Derenstein
Fred Dodsworth
MG Dufresne
Andy Dugas`
Joe Donohoe
Tony DuShane
Tongo Eisen-Martin
Lee Foust
JK Fowler
Bill Gainer
Cassandra Rockwood-Rice Ganem
Charlie Getter
Steve Goldberg
Steven Gray
Dazie Grego-Sykes
Jason Hardung
Hollie Hardy
Nicole Henares
Nazelah Jamison
Maisha Johnson
Nick Johnson
Juba Kalamka
Vernon Keeve III
Yume Kim
Alexandra Kostoulas
Charles Kruger
Allsion Landa
Joel Landmine
Vanessa Rochelle Lewis
RIchard Loranger
Michelle Lyn
Brandon Loberg
Joe Loya
Sean Manzano
Colleen McKee
KR Morrison
Amanda Muniz
Ginger Murray
Alexandra Naughton
Jason Neese
Zephir O’Meara
Dawn Oberg
Patty Orozco-Cronin
Sarah Page
John Alfred Panzer
Lauren Dissident Parker
Indiana Pehlivanova
Rob Pierce
Tom Pitts
Baruch Porras-Hernandez
Roger Porter
HK Rainey
Simon Rogghe
Kim Shuck
Cybele Zufolo Siegel
Jon Siegel
Todd Siegel
Ryan Snellman
Jan Steckel
SB Stokes
John Swain
William Taylor Jr.
Andrew Thomas
Lauren Traetto
Keeley Ann Tulloh
Rene Vaz
Alia Volz
Sandra Wassile
Jason Whitacre
Arisa White
Maw Shein Win
Zarina Zabrisky
James Zealous
