NYC, Ep. 25

April 14, 2010 — Before hitting her SKITS’N’TITS set at Bowery Poetry Club, the irreverent comic minstrel Jessica Delfino swung by LDM NYC at Pianos to, um, serenade us with her Rape Whistle Song before jumping into the judging fray. The well-lubricated audience tittered with anticipation while tutu'd host Erin Hosier and stellar sidekick Carter Edwards sorted a "coin" for flipping. With only a cat's behind standing between Emma Straub (Flatmancrooked) and Derrick Brown (Write Bloody), Straub won the toss.

Straub led off with a spellbinding account of her brush with NKOTB's Joey McIntyre at the height of the boy band's reunion glory. Not to be outdone, Brown rejoined with a cautionary tale of a sweaty, misanthropic Easter Bunny entertaining a party of blind kids.

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LA, Ep. 2

April 14, 2010 — The stars were out in the City of Angels for LA's second-ever Literary Death Match, as a packed The Mountain Bar saw 826LA rep and Deadliest Catch senior story producer J. Ryan Stradal narrowly out-wadded-paper-toss performance poet Mindy Nettifee (The Drums Inside Your Chest rep) in a wild game of Pitch Your Script! Stradal won 2-0, but the score was way closer than that final result would indicate.

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San Diego, Ep. 1

April 13, 2010 — Good vibrations of the non-seismic variety buzzed the denizens of San Diego as a whopping eight contenders strove in ways aggro and not-so to claim the first-ever Literary Death Match San Diego crown at The Loft.  It was DimeStories' featured writer Shanna Mahin who triumphed in a proxy battle of Musical Beach Chairs, hefting high the spoils. 

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SF, Ep. 28

April 9, 2010 — Hundreds packed the Elbo Room for the latest skirmish that saw Jake Swearingen narrowly defeat Alexa Dooseman in an outrageously brilliant game of green light red light!

But before the finale was even a consideration, round one offered guy-on-guy literary action with Litquake’s Ransom Stephens (The God Patent) against Swearingen (Best American Non-Required Reading). Swearingen won the book toss and in true let’s-do-this-thing! fashion, launched into a dry satire of life in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, his BoBo narrator limited to a fixed gear bike in the burning city. Eventually, he makes his way to a survivalist compound in the central valley, only to become someone’s "bride." Ransom Stephens, garbed

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Denver, Ep. 3

April 8 — To celebrate the 4th stop on Opium100's Fundraising Tour, the Literary Death Match returned to the Mile High City with an epic-sized six-reader AWP affair that ended when New England Review rep Matthew Olzmann outdueled Naugatuck Review's M in a wild finale of Literary Resurrection. Olzmann won by a narrow 3-2 margin, resurrecting Willem Defoe Jesus before M could raise Mel Gibson Jesus.

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Twin Cities, Ep. 1

April 6, 2010 — The LDM Twin Cities debut at Club Jager was a raucous and sold-out affair that proved Minnesota was a perfect spot (excitable crowd, talent-rich judges and writers) for the series. After a series of sensational readings and as-sensational judging, it was The Evergreen Review rep Brian Beatty who outdueled Replacement Press' John Jodzio 2-0 in closer-than-the-score-appeared finale of Toss the Squishy Baseball through the Various Literary Holes.  

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Iowa City, Ep. 1

April 3, 2010 — In an epic Iowa City clash that featured countless LDM firsts (three rounds, live mini-burlesque, an on-stage kiss, and so much more), in the end it was David Gorin out-backsiding co-finalists Tim Denevi and Rachel Yoder in a fierce three-way Muzikal Chairs finale to bring home the biggest first of all: the Literary Death Match championship. 

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Chicago, Ep. 5

April 1, 2010 — The Literary Death Match return to The Hideout was an April Fool's evening rife with surprise, as Caroline Picard of Green Lantern Gallery & Press outdueled The Encyclopedia Show's Robbie Q. Telfer in the strangest, most un-finale finale ever (detailed below), to take home the Literary Death Match championship.  

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New Orleans, Ep. 1

March 26, 2010 — The Big Easy's Literary Death Match debut, teamed with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, was an absolute classic, as Babylon Rolling author Amanda Boyden took home the title by outpacing Arthur Phillips (a five-time Jeopardy! champion and author of The Song Is You) in a Tennessee Williams/Who Dat? finale compilation that had Boyden beating Phillips 13.3 seconds to 20.4. 

But long before the finale, the night kicked off at One Eyed Jacks with Boyden taking on masterful performance poet Chuck Perkins who delivered a varied and brilliant poetic trifecta before Boyden

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NYC, Ep. 24

March 18, 2010 — The pen proved mighty as always at the LDM NYC 24 at Bowery Poetry Club, though all swords were kept hidden by the pacifistic crowd, precluding comparison between the two contending tools. Oh well. Joined by first-time co-host Bernie Kravitz, Opium’s own Todd Zuniga opted to crash his own party with his somber announcement that it would be his last Literary Death Match as a resident of NYC for the foreseeable future (Paris, here he comes).

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