What is your story?
How do you want to tell it?

Art and literacy matter.  

The Coastside has stories to tell, and Coastal Lit helps make that happen.

What We Do

An outdoor community event with people sitting at tables in front of a stage where a person is speaking. There are string lights overhead, a mural on the wall, and banners advertising a music festival and a maker event.

Coastal Lit is a creative community organization bringing people together through storytelling, art, and education.

Whether it’s through local podcasts, live theater, or poetry nights, we’re building spaces for people on the Coastside to connect, imagine, and share their voices.

Our mission is rooted in a love for language and a belief that literacy and education open doors to a better future.

But we can't do it without you. Great stories—and strong communities—are built together.

Half Moon Bay

Coastal Lit is a non-profit in

We do a lot of fun things, here are a few of them!

Three handmade greeting cards with various designs, including floral artwork, a vintage-style girl illustration, and a collage of newspaper and postage stamps.

Postcards to the Future!


We’re excited to partner with the Half Moon Bay History Association and Make it Main Street on a creative community project: Postcards to the Future!

This interactive project invites the Coastside community to create and share their visions, stories, and artwork for the future of Half Moon Bay. Postcards will be collected, archived, and displayed in a public exhibit this fall.

Learn more
A man with a gray beard and glasses wearing a khaki cap and headphones is smiling while speaking into a microphone in a radio studio. There is a red banner behind him displaying 'KHMBradio.com' and a computer monitor in front of him.

David Gorn’s “Our Stories” Podcast with Coastside News Group


We have launched Our Stories, an ongoing news podcast in collaboration with Coastside News (publishers of the Half Moon Bay Review and Pacifica Tribune) and the KHMB Community Radio station.

Learn more
A glass window covered with yellow sticky notes containing handwritten messages and drawings. In the center, a white sign with blue, red, and black text and a microphone graphic advertises a community speaking event at Mac Duta Park on Thursdays from 5:00 to 6:30 PM.

Make It Main Street and the Speaker’s Space

We sponsor the monthly Make It Main Street event in downtown Half Moon Bay by contributing to Speakers’ Space – a community forum for prose, poetry and spoken word performance art.  Hundreds of people have contributed their thoughts and words to a poetry project over the first few years – and we supplied the funds to publish their words into “Write It Here, Read It There" a collection of poetry and prose reflecting the diverse spirit, experience and beauty of the Coastside. 

Learn more
Two women sitting and talking in a room with a piano behind them.

Live Stage Production



We underwrote an independent theater project, a staged reading of "A Doll’s House, Part II", written by Lucas Hnath, produced by Elise Gasper of Half Moon Bay in March of 2025. "A Doll’s House, Part II" follows up on Henrik Ibsen’s classic "A Doll’s House", by asking and answering the question: What happens after Nora walks out the door at the end of Ibsen’s play?

Coastal Literary Arts Movement (“Coastal Lit,” sometimes “CLAM”) is a California 501(c)(3) registered charity with the IRS and state of California. All donations to us are deductible to the full extent allowed by law.


Have questions? Please contact us:
coastlit@gmail.com

Mailing Address: PO Box 3557, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019