Inaugural 'Boston Lit Crawl' Winds Its Way Down Newbury Street This Month

BACK BAY, MA — A different kind of pub crawl is coming to Newbury Street this month, bringing together booze, books, and Boston's rich literary history.

In a prelude to this year's Boston Book Festival, the inaugural Boston Lit Crawl hopes to connect audiences with the Boston literary scene through unusual venues, the element of surprise and, of course, free drinks.

Audiences will "crawl" up and down Newbury Street, taking in local writers' readings, poetry performances, plays, poetry slams, literary improv and more. But aside from the no-brainer of Trident Book Sellers, most of the venues are somewhat unconventional hosts — like the School of Fashion Design, Bukowski Tavern, or Barbershop Lounge. Most venues will have free wine or beer available for those over 21.

"I think that's what's fun for people, to think, 'I don't know exactly what this will be like,'" said Boston Literary District Director Alysia Abbott. "This isn't just a reading or a lecture."

The Boston Literary District, along with numerous local co-sponsors, is staging the event, a first for Boston.

The Lit Crawl is Oct. 13. You can find the full schedule and more information here. You can also visit the Lit Crawl Facebook page for ongoing updates, as the event gets closer.

It comes to the city by way of San Francisco, where Abbott says Literary District colleague and freelance writer James Sullivan transplanted the idea. In SF, the Lit Crawl is part of its annual Litquake Festival, a way to engage audiences in a creative way, and to highlight the city's rich literary history.

Abbott and Sullivan found the idea a natural fit for Boston, a walkable city with a deep bench of authors to draw on, both historically and in its contemporary writing scene.

"It's really about celebrating the literary community that is Boston," she told Patch.

The "crazy places" hosting each event are meant to drum up excitement for the Crawl, and to help literary organizations reach new audiences, Abbott said.

Its various venues along Newbury Street trace their way through the Boston Literary District, which includes locations immortalized in print and residences of some of the country's most prolific writers, from Louisa May Allcott and Sylvia Plath to Robert Frost and John Updike.

The Crawl culminates at the foot of the recently installed Edgar Allan Poe statue, Boston's "sour native son" memorialized in bronze on Boylston Street near the Common. Abbott thinks it's appropriate to end with a live reading from the master of the macabre, particularly coming two weeks before Halloween.

"What better week to celebrate?" she said.

Photo by MK Feeney, Flickr/Creative Commons