Detroit, Ep. 1

September 15, 2022 — It took us 16 years to make our way to Motor City, and we were missing out. Our Detroit debut was a smash-hit on the gorgeous The Old Miami lawn, and saw Frank Anthony Polito barely topple Alise Alousi in sudden-sudden death to win Polito the LDM Detroit, Ep. 1 crown and literary immortality to go with it. 

Here's who took part: 

JUDGES: 

Literary Merit: Jimmy Doom, actor and author of Humans, Being: A Story a Day for a Year, check out his Substack Roulette Weal, home of daily short fiction

Performance: Mary Cobra, guitarist for the Detroit Cobras, described by Third Man Records as “one of the greatest guitarists to ever come out of Detroit" 

Intangibles: Ryan Patrick Hooper, award-winning host and producer of CultureShift on 101.9 WDET-FM Detroit’s NPR station

Super-Intangibles: T. Barb, comedian, radio personality, and author of The Hoodrat Kitchen Vegan Cookbook — don't miss her 30-minute special on Amazon Prime’s Gettin Off

READERS:
Round 1:
* Frank Anthony Polito, playwright, screenwriter and Lambda award-winning author of Band Fags!, Spirit of Detroit and the all-new Renovated to Death

* Jack Cheng, author of the award-winning See You in the Cosmos (winner of the 2017 Golden Kite and Great Lakes, Great Reads awards for Best Middle Grade Fiction), and a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow

Round 2: 
* Casey Rocheteau, author, visual/sound artist, Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellow, creator of the Shrine of the Black Medusa Tarot, and award-winning author of The Dozen 

* Alise Alousi, poet whose work has appeared in The Museum of Americana, Glue Gun and is forthcoming in We Call to the Eye & the Night, love poems by authors of Arab descent. She works at InsideOut Literary Arts, received fellowships to Mesa Refuge, the Fine Arts Work Center and was awarded a Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship

Hosted by LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga (author of the award-nominated novel Collision Theory)

Where: The Old Miami, 3930 Cass Ave, Detroit