San Francisco doesn’t have a books festival. We have a festival of writers — LitQuake — every year in October. The Bay Area Reporter has an advance on queer writers appearing in the fiesta. Opening night is tonight at the Regency Ballroom, with Dan Nakamura, Ray Manzarek, Jill Tracy, Frank Portman, Penelope Houston, and Metallica’s Lars Ullrich.

On Sunday there’s a sort of omnibus event, where they parade writers onto the stage in the Main Library’s auditorium to read for five minutes each. But the big event for most people is LitCrawl in the Mission. LitCrawl is hard to describe. Imagine Valencia St. as a big high school, and bookstores and bars are the classrooms. During first period, 6:00-7:00, four or five writers read at each of ten locations. Most of the locations are packed, so there’s no sense in trying to go from one to another during each period; just pick one and stay. Then second period starts at 7:15 and lasts for another hour — another ten (different) venues. And so on for a third hour (8:30-9:30) at still another 10 locations.

Best to just grok the schedule and pick your spots. Oh, and forget about parking. Take BART.