Panel: Grotto Nights at the Library

Learn how booksellers, librarians and literary communities work together to uplift authors and enrich the literary landscape. An author's platform is more than the sum of its subscribers—it is an ecosystem of champions and cheerleaders and it happens in real life. Janine Kovac moderates this discussion with bookseller Daniel Dunque-Estrada, author and professor Susan Ito and SFPL staffer Michelle Jeffers. Unlock the secrets that the algorithm will never know and find your audience, starting with the people in your neighborhood. 

Daniel Duque-Estrada is the owner of Rosa Blanca Books, an indie pop-up bookshop with a new storefront at The Good Table Cafe in El Sobrante, CA. He is also an actor, having appeared on stages across the nation and locally, as well as the Producing Director at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco.

Susan Kiyo Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, published by the Ohio State University Press, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the William Saroyan International Prize. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in Catapult, Hyphen, Agni, and Guernica and elsewhere. She was awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and Blue Mountain Center. Her theatrical adaptation of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater. She can be found at www.thesusanito.com.

Michelle Jeffers is the chief of Community Programs and Partnerships at SFPL. Her department plans and promotes the library’s wide array of public programming, special events, exhibitions, and classes for all ages and engages in partnerships with civic, cultural, and educational institutions. She serves on the board of Litquake and the education committee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 

Janine Kovac is the author of Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home and The Nutcracker Chronicles: A Fairytale Memoir. She is the curator for Grotto Nights at the Library and co-director of Litquake's Lit Crawl. 

The Writers Grotto is a community of working writers and narrative artists who connect in physical and virtual space, pooling their talents to support each other, mentor and teach others, and engage the wider world. The Grotto fosters a literary culture that is generous in spirit and deeply inclusive, elevating writers of all backgrounds. 

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