Saturday, May 2, 2026

LitFest Continues Saturday in Pasadena With 35-Plus Panels and Readings

A free literary festival serving Pasadena and Altadena returns for its main public day with 100-plus authors

LitFest in the Dena, the extraordinary free literary festival serving Pasadena and Altadena, holds its full Saturday program today from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, with panels, workshops and readings built around the 2026 theme “Books That Changed the Public Narrative.”

The two-day festival, now in its 14th year, runs at 585 E. Colorado Blvd. The Saturday session carries the bulk of the schedule, which the festival lists as more than 35 panels, workshops and readings across the weekend, featuring more than 100 authors. Admission is free and no registration is required, according to organizers.

The festival is presented by Light Bringer Project, a Pasadena-based nonprofit founded in 1990, and the literary journal Locavore Lit LA. Festival materials list the 2026 theme as a focus on books that have shifted public conversations — citing works such as “Silent Spring,” “The Jungle,” “The New Jim Crow,” “On the Road,” “The Grapes of Wrath” and “The Second Sex” as examples of literature that organizers say became part of the national conversation.

Featured authors named in the festival’s promotional material include Daniel Olivas, Janet Fitch, Gary Phillips, Ryka Aoki and Francesca Lia Block. Olivas, who lives in Pasadena, is a senior attorney with the California Department of Justice and the author of 13 books, including the 2024 novel “Chicano Frankenstein,” according to his festival biography.

A 2:30 p.m. Saturday panel titled “Speaking Truth to Power: Humanizing Immigrant Communities in the Time of ICE” will feature Olivas alongside Lisa Alvarez, LAist arts reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and speculative fiction writer Pedro Iniguez, with Thomas E. Backer, PhD, moderating, according to the festival’s press release as cited by Altadena Now.

Latine literary voices figure prominently elsewhere in Saturday’s schedule. Red Hen Press and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, are presenting a reading featuring Francisco Aragón, the founding director of Letras Latinas, the press release said. A separate panel, “Brilliant Bilinguals,” gathers Spanish-language diaspora poets and includes a round of lotería.

The schedule also lists a children’s-literature panel, “Between Childhood and the World,” with Dan McCauley, Ryane Granados, Elisa Parhad and Margaret Finnegan; and a young-adult panel, “Raising Teen Conscience,” with Christina Hoag, Tisha Reichle-Aguilera, Reverie Fey and Francesca Lia Block. A science-fiction-for-social-change session is led by Ciena Valenzuela-Peterson and Valentina Gomez of the Omega Sci-Fi Project, the festival said.

Saturday programming includes interactive stations: a zine-making table led by cartoonist Julie Fiveash, on-the-spot typewriter poems by Jeanelle Fu, and a community poetics table hosted by the San Gabriel Valley Phoenix Poets, according to the festival’s event-information page. A pop-up bookstore is operated on site by Flintridge Bookstore. El Jarocho Taco Stand will serve from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and light refreshments and coffee from Jameson Brown will be available from noon to 5 p.m.

LitFest was founded in 2012 and was previously held at Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena. The festival relocated to Pasadena Presbyterian Church in 2025 after the January Eaton Fire led to the mausoleum site being used for Army Corps of Engineers recovery operations, according to the press release.

Sessions are spread across Fellowship Hall, South Hall and The Chapel on the ground floor and The Library and The Study on the second floor, with ushers and signage directing attendees. Ramp access is available at the Colorado Blvd. entrance, and an on-site elevator serves all event rooms.

The festival recommends that Saturday attendees not park on surrounding streets, which fall within one-hour daytime restrictions. The City-owned lot on S. Madison Ave. provides about 100 spaces, with discounted parking available to attendees who show their festival program. Public parking is also available at the Union/El Molino plaza near Playhouse Village Park. Metro bus lines 180, 181, 256 and 686 stop in front of the church.

The full Saturday schedule is posted at litfestinthedena.org/schedule2026. General programming inquiries may be directed to Natalie Lydick at (626) 228-4220 or litfestinthedena@gmail.com.

The Friday-night opening session ran from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on May 1. Saturday’s program is the festival’s main public day, organizers said, and runs through 5:30 p.m.

LitFest in the Dena, Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Saturday, May 2, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more call (626) 228-4220 or visit litfestinthedena.org/schedule2026. Tickets: Free; no registration required.