Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:51AM April 22, 2010 — Literary Death Match Austin's return — at Speakeasy, the 11th stop on Opium100's Monster Fundraising Tour — was a Texas-sized success that ended with Tyler Stoddard Smith narrowly besting Spike Gillespie 5-3 in a wild game of Wildly High Five the Co-Host Then Guess the Musical Artist. Smith, basking in new literary immortality, was crowned by Austin, Ep. 1 champ (and emergency judge) Amelia Gray.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 at 11:28AM April 22, 2010 — An epic night at Cambridge's Enormous Room served up genius judging, genius readings, and a literary Hockey-Baseball Book-Knock-Over Shootout that saw Beacon Press reader-rep Jay Wexler outsnipe Quick Fiction reader-representative Christen Enos 3-2 in overtime, making Wexler Boston's latest Literary Death Match Champion.
Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 2:16AM 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.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 1:08PM 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.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 1:11PM 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.
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 3:31AM 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
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:35AM 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.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 7:30PM 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.
Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 10:45AM 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.
Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 7:34PM 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.