Literary Death Match is a reading series co-created in 2006 by Todd Zuniga, Elizabeth Koch, and Dennis DiClaudio. Each event features four readers who read their own writing for seven minutes or less, and are then critiqued by three judges (often actors, comedians, authors, musicians or dancers) in the categories of literary merit, performance and intangibles. The winner is then decided by a literary-skewed, game show-type finale to decide who wins the Literary Death Match crown.[1]
In 2008, Literary Death Match was named "Best Scribbler Smackdown" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian "Best of the Bay" awards.[2] In 2010, Interview said "Events like Literary Death Match are helping to revitalize the coolitude of the printed word."[3]
Bryan Charles (Open City), Deb Olin Unferth (Noon), Geoff Wolinetz (Yankee Pot Roast), Mike Sacks (as read by Ted Travelstead) reading for Sweet Fancy Moses
SF Chronicle's Oscar Villalon judging literary merit, Kasper Hauser's Rob Baedeker on performance, and Levine Greenburg literary agent Danielle Svetcov on intangibles
Matt Herlihy (Sweet Fancy Moses), Andy Raskin (Big Ugly Review), Kirk Read (Instant City), Andrew O. Dugas (edifice WRECKED)
Bucky Sinister (Progressive Reading Series), Regina Louise (Inside Story Time), Carol Queen (Writer's With Drinks), Kelly Beardsley (Porchlight Entertainment)
Michelle Richmond (The Year of the Fog), Kurt Bodden (Talk Show Live) and Sean Finney (Canteen)
Four actors from the legendary Killing My Lobster comedy troupe stormed the stage and read from past print issues of Opium Magazine: Jon Wolanske, Eric Schniewinde, Joel Dovev and Todd Brotze
Jane Ganahl (Litquake co-founder), Mia Lipman (Canteen) and Alan Black
Clive Matson (publisher of the Crazy Child Scribbler), Andrew O. Dugas (Unlikely Stories), Rupert Estanislao (Suicide Kings) and Justin Chin (Manic D Press)
Stephen Elliott (Happy Baby), Kurt Bodden (Talk Show Live), Michelle Richmond (The Year of the Fog), Jon Wolanske (Killing My Lobster), Sean Finney (Canteen) and Todd Zuniga (LDM's co-creator)
Kirk Read (episode 2's winner), Andrew Lam (episode 7's winner), Tony DuShane (episode 6 winner) and Sam Hurwitt (episode 1 Winner)
John Williams (Titlepage.tv), Debbie Kuan (Wigleaf), Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell (Anderbo.com) and Amy Shearn (Brick Magazine's representative and the author of How Far is the Ocean from Here)
The New Yorker's Ben Greenman, SF improviser Kurt Bodden and Kansas comediess Jodi Bullock
Dennis DiClaudio (Guerilla Lit Reading Series), Lincoln Michel (L Magazine Literary Upstart), Katherine Taylor (Vermon on the Mount Reading Series) and Thaddeus Rutkowski (Poetry vs. Comedy)
Andrew Leland (The Believer), Melanie Case (Killing My Lobster) and James Hass (The Farallon Review)
Jaynel Attolini (Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak), Katie Crouch (Tin House), Veronica Chater (Memoir) and Rodes Fishburne (Going To See the Elephant)
Bucky Sinister (reading Tao Lin, A Poem Written by a Bear), Candy Churilla (reading John Cheever, Reunion), Will Durst (reading Donald Barthleme, The School) and Paco Romane (reading George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation)
Luke Brown (Tindal Street Press), Laura Dockrill, and Tim Clare (Aisle16)
Amber Marks (Book Club Boutique), Joe Dunthorne (English Writers Football Team), Tim Wells (Pen Pusher Magazine), and Nick Harkaway (BBC Radio 3's The Verb)
Nami Mun (Miles from Nowhere), artist Jay Ryan, and Barry Hite (iO, Second City, Annoyance Theaters).
Spencer Dew (THE2NDHAND), Adam Levin (Ninth Letter), Gabriel Gudding (MAKE), Febronio Zatarain (contratiempo), Simone Muench (POETRY), Kathleen Rooney (Switchback Books), Paul Killebrew (Canarium Books), and Michael Czyzniejewski (Another Chicago Magazine)
David Henry Sterry (Hos, Hookers, Call-Girls, and Rent Boys: Prostitutes Writing on Life, Love, Work, Sex, and Money), Sarah Jane Stratford (author of The Midnight Guardian), David Hollander, and Robert Lopez (author of Part of the World)
Amelia Gray (author, AM/PM), Kyle Beachy (The Slide), Jeff Martin (editor, The Customer is Always Wrong), and Jason Sheehan (Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen)
George Chopping (author of collections Derailed and Shelf Life), Miranda Ward, Jake Wallis Simons (author of The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew) and Megan Kerr
Ben Fountain (author, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara), Tina Parker and Owen Egerton (How Best to Avoid Dying)
Katherine Center (author, Everyone is Beautiful), Amelia Gray (author, AM/PM), Will Clarke (author, Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel, Sort Of) and William Razavi
Nelly Reifler (SWEET: Actors Reading Writers), Daniel Nester (author, How To Be Inappropriate), Christopher Kennedy (New York Tyrant) and Michael Atkinson (author, Hemingway Deadlights
Dylan Schaffer (Life, Death and Bialys), Michelle Tea (Valencia), Samantha Schoech (The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater), Joshua Mohr (Some Things that Meant the World to Me)
San Francisco State University is a public research university in San Francisco. It is part of the California State University system and offers 118 bachelor's degree programs, 94 master's degree programs, and 5 doctoral degree programs along with 26 teaching credentials among six academic colleges. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal; a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness; and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines.
Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.
A dyke march is a lesbian visibility and protest march, much like the original Gay Pride parades and gay rights demonstrations. The main purpose of a dyke march is the encouragement of activism within the lesbian and sapphic community. Dyke marches commonly take place the Friday or Saturday before LGBT pride parades. Larger metropolitan areas usually have several Pride-related happenings both before and after the march to further community building; with social outreach to specific segments such as older women, women of color, and lesbian parenting groups.
Antonio Sacre is an American author, solo performer, and storyteller. He writes and performs internationally, in English and Spanish.
Bootie is the first club night in the United States dedicated solely to mashups and bootlegs, and was founded in San Francisco, California. It is now the biggest and longest running all-mashup party in the world, with regular parties in several cities.
The Extra Action Marching Band is an American musical group loosely based on the American marching band construct. The instrumentation is entirely brass, drums and one modified bullhorn. At performances, provocatively flamboyant cheerleaders with pom-poms and flags engage the audience.
"There's really no need to introduce the Extra Action Marching Band: The Bay Area institution has been crashing parties, invading bars, and blowing minds with its signature "high school marching band on acid" punk-meets-Sousa bombast for years now. The tuba players, flag team, and percussion section take perverse delight in twisting the staid conventions of their respective forms, and it can be downright disorienting to spot a sexy trombone player." - Hiya Swanhuyser – SF Weekly 2005
“… performance at the… Hollywood Bowl… Not bad for a bunch of temperamental weirdos who were once paid in gift certificates to a sex toy shop [payment for playing at the opening of Good Vibrations vibrator store for women]” –SPIN Magazine, Feb 2006
Elana Dykewomon was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
Litquake is San Francisco's annual literary festival. Originally named Litstock, the festival events took place in a single day in Golden Gate Park in the spring of 1999. It now has a two-week run in mid-October, as well as year-round programs and workshops.
Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a roadway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997. A core principle of the vision is that "Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society" rather than the more conventional comparison between costs and benefits, where a monetary value is placed on life and health, and then that value is used to decide how much money to spend on a road network towards the benefit of decreasing risk.
The San Francisco Examiner is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Mark Moshe Kasher is an American stand-up comedian, writer and actor based in the Los Angeles area. He is the author of the 2012 memoir Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16. In 2009, iTunes named Kasher "Best New Comic" and his comedy album Everyone You Know Is Going to Die, and Then You Are! was ranked one of the top 20 comedy albums on iTunes that same year. He was also named "Comic to Watch in 2010" by Punchline Magazine.
Scott Wiener is an American politician and a member of the California State Senate. A Democrat, he represents the 11th Senatorial District, encompassing San Francisco and parts of San Mateo County.
Death Guild is the oldest continually operating gothic/industrial dance club in the United States, and second in the world. Death Guild opened on March 15, 1993, and is currently held every Monday at DNA Lounge in San Francisco.
Zarina Zabrisky is an American writer based in the Bay Area, California. She is the author of the novel, We, Monsters, several collections of short stories, including Explosion, A Cute Tombstone and her debut work, Iron, and a book of collaborative poetry and art, Green Lions, co-written with Simon Rogghe. Zabrisky resides in San Francisco, California.
Bruce Isaacson is an American poet and publisher. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Clark County, Nevada, a community of more than two million people where Las Vegas is located, June 1, 2016 He initiated the Poets of National Stature series there, which includes readings by Juan Felipe Hererra, the sitting Poet Laureate of the United States and Beat Legend Michael McClure. Other poets Isaacson brought previously to Las Vegas include beat feminist icon Diane di Prima, San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirshman, NY Beat Poet Laureate, Andy Clausen, and others.
Bill Hillmann is an American author, storyteller, and journalist. He is a bull-runner and former boxer.
African Americans in San Francisco, California, composed just under 6% of the city's total population as of 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, down from 13.4% in 1970. There are about 55,000 people of full or partial black ancestry living within the city. The community began with workers and entrepreneurs of the California Gold Rush in the 19th century, and in the early-to-mid 20th century, grew to include migrant workers with origins in the Southern United States, who worked as railroad workers or service people at shipyards. In the mid-20th century, the African American community in the Fillmore District earned the neighborhood the nickname the "Harlem of the West," referring to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, which is associated with African American culture.
Kitty Tsui is an American author, poet, actor, and bodybuilder. She was the first known Asian American lesbian to publish a book.
References
↑ "KQED Arts", Public Media for Northern California, March 11, 2008
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