Held as part of October's Litquake festival, this show features readings that illuminate the funny, profane, and heartbreaking elements of political discourse in the U.S. With humor columnist Beth Spotswood, TV reporter and author Belva Davis, linguistics professor and NPR regular Geoffrey Nunberg, and political satirist/author Will Durst. Hosted by Jody Weiner. This event was recorded live at Tosca Café in San Francisco. 

If you loved the Irvine Welsh episode and need some more Litquake for your ears, here's the full audience Q&A from Z Space on September 17th.

Irvine Welsh is the author of Filth (being made into a movie starring James McAvoy), Acid House, Glue, Porno, and Crime, writes screenplays, and produces movies. His new novel Skagboys is an exhilarating and moving prequel to the bestselling phenomenon Trainspotting. He is originally from Scotland, and now lives in Chicago, Miami, and London. He is in conversation here with soccer columnist Alan Black, also from Scotland, who produced the U.S. premiere of the stage version of Trainspotting. This event was recorded live at Z Space in San Francisco. 

Molly Ringwald is an actress and author of When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Parade, Esquire, and the Hartford Courant. She began her film career at age 13 with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in The Tempest, and her extensive film credits include The Pick-Up Artist, Fresh Horses, Betsy’s Wedding, Billy Bob Thornton’s short film Some People Call It a Sling Blade, and the now iconic coming-of-age movies Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, and is in conversation here with Litquake co-founder Jane Ganahl. This event was recorded live at Verdi Club in San Francisco. Co-presented by Green Apple Books.

Joshua Cohen is author of five fiction works, and his essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, Bookforum, Tablet Magazine, London Review of Books, and elsewhere. His books include A Heaven of Others, the 800-page epic Witz, and his newest, Four New Messages, a quartet of “urgent and visionary dispatches that seek to save art, sex, and even alienation from corporatism and technology run rampant.” Cohen lives in New York City, and is in conversation here with McSweeney‘s editorial director Ethan Nosowsky at Litquake’s Epicenter. This event was recorded live at Tosca Cafe in San Francisco. Co-presented by City Lights Books.

Alice LaPLante’s novel Turn of Mind is already one of the most talked about books of 2012. This year’s winner of the California Book Award for first fiction, the book tells the story of a surgeon in the throes of Alzheimer’s who may or may not be responsible for her best friend’s death. It’s been called “remarkably poignant,” “pitch-perfect,” and “technically daring.” Recorded live at Tosca Cafe, in conversation with Sarah Ladipo Manyika. Co-presented by Green Apple Books.

The New York Times called Adam Johnson's latest novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, “a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.” Johnson is also author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, and teaches at Stanford University. He is recorded live at Tosca Café, in conversation with Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware. Co-presented by Green Apple Books.

Carolyn Burke celebrates release of her recent book No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, which captures the iconic French singer’s immense charisma along with the time and place that gave rise to her international career. Burke is also author of two other critically acclaimed biographies, Lee Miller: A Life, and Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Accompanied by live music from Betty Roi, an authentic Parisian chanteuse whose training has taken her from Spain to Israel, Paris to San Francisco. Recorded live at Tosca Café. Co-presented by City Lights Books.

Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and six other nonfiction books, including But Beautiful, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The winner of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is a regular contributor to many publications in the US and UK, and his latest book is Zona. He lives in London. Dyer is in conversation here with David Thomson, a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Recorded live at San Francisco's Tosca Café. Co-presented by Green Apple Books and The Believer.

Peter Carey is a literary chameleon, whose nine works of long-form fiction have spanned the stylistic gamut from speculative to historical to epistolary. He's written the fictionalized story of his native Australia's most famous antihero (Ned Kelly) and turned the British classic Great Expectations on its head. In addition, he's written short stories, nonfiction, and work for film, having adapted his novel, Bliss, for that medium and writing a screenplay for the German director and playwright Win Wenders, Until the End of the World. He is one of only two authors to have won the Man Booker Prize twice (J. M. Coetzee is the other), in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. Carey's new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, focuses on a clockwork automaton and its particular fascination for a grieving woman. In conversation with Litquake's Elise Proulx. Recorded live at San Francisco's Tosca Café. Co-presented by City Lights Books.