Festivals

Litquake – Unforgettable Sleuths

Oct 18, 2024|7:15pm

7:15-9:00 pm PT

The Lost Church | 988 Columbus Ave | San Francisco, CA

This event has already taken place.

Admission is $18. Early bird admission is $15 through Oct. 13. Follow the link above to register.

Clever crimes and tight plotting can only get you so far—when it comes to a mystery novel or series’s staying power, it’s the detective who counts. Four masterful suspense novelists introduce their unforgettable protagonists—from a supernaturally talented forensic photographer to the granddaughter of a serial killer. Nordic Noir master Thomas Enger (Stigma) and National Book Award nominee Ramona Emerson (Exposure) are joined by Michelle Chouinard (The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco) and Nina Simon (Mother-Daughter Murder Night), whose Bay Area–set mysteries feature home-grown amateur sleuths. Vera Chan moderates this talented lineup, who will also give aspiring writers a few clues about how to create super sleuths of their own. Doors at 6:30PM.

Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival, is celebrating 25 years! Their 2024 Festival runs from 10/10 – 10/26 with 140+ events taking place all over the Bay Area and featuring 500+ authors and performers. The full schedule is available at litquake.org(opens in a new tab).

Part of Litquake’s Words Around the World
Sponsored by NORLA, Norway House, and Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press
Co-presented with Mystery Writers of America-NorCal

Author

Thomas Enger

Born in 1973, Thomas Enger lives in Oslo. He has two kids (ages 18 and 23). He has degrees in sports, history, and journalism. He worked as a journalist for about 10 years before making his debut as an author in 2010. Since then he’s written 16 novels, published in well over 30 countries. He’s a composer as well.

Author

Ramona Emerson

Ramona Emerson is a Diné writer and filmmaker originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. Her debut novel, Shutter, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award, nominated for the Edgar for Best First Novel, a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards for Best First Novel, and winner of the Lefty Award for Best First Novel. She has a bachelor’s in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she and her husband, the producer Kelly Byars, run their production company Reel Indian Pictures.

Author

Michelle Chouinard

Michelle Chouinard (M.M. Chouinard) is the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author behind The Detective Jo Fournier thrillers and the standalone psychological thriller The Vacation. Also, her amateur-sleuth series, The Serial-Killer Guide to San Francisco, is set to be released this September. She has a Ph.D in developmental psychology from Stanford and was a founding faculty member at U.C. Merced; she loves animals, coffee, amateur genealogy, and anything to do with Halloween, Serial Killers, or the zombie apocalypse.

Author

Nina Simon

Nina Simon writes crime fiction about strong women. She is the New York Times-bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night. This big-hearted whodunnit is a Reese’s Book Club pick and a “best of 2023” selection for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CrimeReads, and Library Journal. Before turning to fiction, Simon wore many hats: NASA engineer, slam poet, game designer, museum director, and nonprofit CEO. Her work on community participation in museums, libraries, parks, and theaters has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, and the TEDx stage. Mother-Daughter Murder Night is Simon’s first novel. She wrote it as a love letter to her mother, as a way to entertain, comfort, and connect with her during a major health crisis. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Simon now lives off-the-grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her family.

Author

Vera Chan

Veteran journalist, published author and aspiring novelist Vera HC Chan has worked at the nexus of journalism and technology, from small papers to the world’s biggest online destinations (Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN), and is now as director of news & media at Steelwork, a narrative architecture agency. Her fiction accolades include awards from Sisters in Crime and Women’s National Book Association Literary Awards, SF chapter for works in progress. On the shorts side, she won The Los Angeles Review 2023 Short Fiction Award for “These Poor Mothers” and her work appears in Tales of Music, Murder & Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology and Midnight Hour. She also produced the nonfiction community memoir, Working the Way: Martial Artists on Their Career Journeys.