Literary Death Match : K Street Magazine

by Jordana Merran

DC9 packed a full house Tuesday night as it played host to the critically-acclaimed literature read-off known as Literary Death Match, now halfway through a nineteen-city tour across North America. Four writers—including Huffington Post blogger Sean Carman, author Sacha Scoblic, comedienne Vijai Nathan, and two-time Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam Champion Jamaal May—each performed seven-minute segments of their most eclectic writing, ranging from memoirs to political satire to poetry; while a panel of three judges (armed with Velcro darts if ever the performers went over time) provided comedic value and thoughtful critique.

“We’re having fun but we’re serious about the kind of fun we’re going to have,” explained LDM creator and Opium Magazine founder Todd Zuniga. Seeing a need to make literature more accessible and exciting to the public (and hoping to sell a couple magazines along the way), Zuniga launched the LDM circuit in 2006, to “’trick’ people into seeing great writers read their own work.”

“I think DC is interested and hungry for this kind of thing,” he said, citing last night’s show as one of the best he’s seen. “A lot of people came up afterwards and asked, ‘How could you have judged that story against the other story?’ That’s sort of the point.”