Lit Quake and California Publishing: Northern California as a Satellite or Alternative Core in the U.S. Literary Field?

Clayton Childress
Sociology
UC Santa Barbara

Scholarly work on the U.S. literary field has been a) focused on New York as the center of American publishing, and b) oriented toward the singular analysis of authors, the publishing industry, or readers. Through an empirical and archival study of Lit Quake, a California literary festival attracting over 14,000 participants in 2010, this work provided needed correctives in both of these substantive areas of study. First, Lit Quake provides a research site in which the distinctly Californian literary field congregates. Second, as a public festival, the fair serves as a primary contact point between authors, publishers, and readers, allowing for an analysis of the field in which these players are not treated in isolation for analysis. This project widened and deepened the understanding of literary culture and literary values in the California context, as well as of the contact points between creators, producers and consumers.