“Undoubtedly the city’s flagship literary event… Features the best known and unknown writers seeking admission to a burgeoning community that Quiet Lightning has created, and is.”

— Jonathan Hirsch, Asterisk Magazine

Last night I walked around with a friend to various bars. We stopped in a leather bar we both used to hang out in but don’t go to anymore. Passing an art gallery we saw a Quiet Lightning reading going on. This is one of my favorite reading series. Every month they publish all the readers in a journal. The reading moves fast, the host says who the readers are at the beginning and then they go up, one after another.

 

After the reading we were all at this outdoor bar and everyone was brimming with ideas. Walking there, arm in arm with my friend’s girlfriend, she said, This is why I moved to San Francisco. The night was good but it was more about youth. One of the guys at the reading said he had to be up at five to teach in the detention center. It wasn’t about age. I thought, We had been old earlier, at the leather bar, and now we were young again. It was as easy as that.

— Stephen Elliott, The Daily Rumpus

“Perhaps the perfect gateway reading series for someone who wants to experience all the flavors (from acidic to zinc) of the SF literary scene.”

— Benjamin Wachs, SF Weekly

“A reading we’ll never forget.”

— Keith Bowers, SF Weekly

“Quiet Lightning is a great reading series, and what’s great about it is is that you don’t necessarily hear the big New York Times bestselling authors who went sailing through just for a day on tour, but these are often younger writers, experimental writers—people on the edge who really get a forum and have a huge following.”

— David Wiegand, SF Chronicle/KQED The Do List

One of San Francisco’s Favorite 49 Charities

– 7×7 Magazine

We’ve also appeared: in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Rumpus, SFist, San Francisco Magazine, FunCheapSF (again here), KQED, SFist, Scout Mob, and SF Weekly.