The last time we posted on Littsburgh we were in the middle of deleting hundreds of events from our calendar (which featured scheduled events through the end of the summer and into early fall). Since then, we’ve felt a little conflicted about sending emails and posting the kinds of updates and announcements we’ve been running since 2015.
Until further notice, we still won’t be posting about in-person events.
We’ve gotten a bunch of fun press releases about future events — some far enough in the future that they feel like they might actually happen! — but with social distancing being increasingly politicized and our friends and colleagues worried about losing their jobs and loved ones… it still feels too early for us to promote post-COVID events.
Honestly, the last thing we want is to have to delete more events from the calendar.
Luckily, we’re happy to announce that Littsburgh’s literary calendar is back in action and filling up with virtual book events!
We’ll be updating Littsburgh’s virtual event calendar with author talks and book launches as we receive event submissions.
Because virtual events aren’t necessarily associated with a local bookstore they can be harder for us to track down, so if you’re an event organizer hosting a virtual event: send an email to news@littsburgh.com with any relevant links so we can add it to Littsburgh’s calendar!
If you haven’t attended a virtual book event yet:
We’ve logged into a few of these so far, some on Facebook and some on Instagram (we haven’t signed into a more conversational Zoom event yet – although those are happening, too). These events have been the highlight of the past few weeks for us: they’ve brought the best of our literary community onto our phones and laptops and the connection, conversation, and friendly faces have turned our days around.
So we hope you’ll attend some of these events — and if you’re an organizer who hasn’t moved online yet, we hope you’ll give it a try!
Going forward…
We can’t wait until we can see everyone in person again (and can throw a huge Littsburgh party!) — but for the time being, it feels really good to plug back into Pittsburgh’s virtual literary scene and pick up where we left off when things started getting a little scary last month.
We typically get pitches from publicists and organizers for Littsburgh’s posts, but for local authors publishing during the pandemic: shoot us a line so we can help spread the word about your book! For excerpts, we just need a Word document (600 – 2k words) + high resolution cover art and a link for more information about your book.
Stay safe out there, and — if you can — support your local authors and indies! Pittsburgh’s indies are constantly evolving their business models to keep us all reading, so we highly recommend checking out your local indie’s website for the most up-to-date information on how to support them during these trying times.
Coronavirus is the worst, but we’ll make it through this together.
Your friends,
Katie, Rachel and Nick
The Littsburgh Crew
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