Russell Hoban fan quotation event set for 15th edition

Russell Hoban fans around the world are invited once again to celebrate the late writer's words on 4th February with the traditional "SA4QE".

The Slickman A4 Quotation Event, or SA4QE for short, started in 2002 when Hoban fans were discussing fittingly off-the-wall ways of recognising his work.

Chicago-based actor-writer Diana Slickman proposed that readers celebrated Hoban's birthday on 4th February by "writing our favorite passage, of any length, from any Russell Hoban book, on a piece of yellow paper and dropping it somewhere public and then walking away, leaving chance to do the rest."

Hoban prepared his manuscripts on yellow paper and it became a motif in several of his novels, starting with the classic Kleinzeit (1974). 4th February 2016 would have been Hoban's 91st birthday.

Since its inception SA4QE has seen over 400 quotations publicly shared across the world by more than 100 individuals, many of whom take part every year.

Quotation from Nick Campbell (2014)

Quotations have been left in bookshops, on park benches, on buses and tube trains, in phone booths, and affixed to walls and bus-shelters. In recent years participants have also shared their favourite quotations on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks using the hashtag #sa4qe

For many years SA4QE postings were documented on sa4qe.blogspot.com, which is now a huge archive of Hoban quotations, many accompanied by photos. The quotation inset at the top of this article, posted in 2015 by John Foley, uses adventurous typography for this quotation from The Medusa Frequency (1987):

In the morning I came awake as I always do, like a man trapped in a car going over a cliff.

Since the launch of russellhoban.org, fans now use this site to post their reports and images. All posts will appear at russellhoban.org/sa4qe as they come in on 4th February, and there will be a link on that page to add reports starting 3rd February UK time.

Further reading

SA4QE 2016

SA4QE 2015

Russell Hoban - full list of works

Russell Hoban's life