🎟EVENT IS FREE! MORE INFO HERE!
In our grand return to LA, Literary Death Match returns to Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater for a whizbang, talent-laden affair that'll wow you in eleventeen different directions. And the best part of all? It's FREE!
What is Literary Death Match? Part literary event, part comedy show, part game show, Literary Death Match brings together four of today’s finest writers to compete in an edge-of-your-seat read-off critiqued by three celebrity judges, and concluded by a slapstick showdown to decide the ultimate champion.
JUDGES:
Literary Merit: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Sympathizer, who has also won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. Plus, HBO's turning The Sympathizer into a TV series in 2023 (directed by Park Chan-wook)
Performance: Kristina Wong, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama, a performance artist, comedian, writer and elected representative who has appeared across North America, the UK, Hong Kong and Africa. She's the mind behind “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord," and her recent “Kristina Wong for Public Office” is a real life stint as the elected Sub-district 5 representative of Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council and rally campaign show, plus she's the winner of this year's Drama Desk, Lortel Award and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Solo Performance
Intangibles: Cameron Esposito, standup comic, actor and author of the best-selling memoir Save Yourself, and has appeared on NBC, CBS, Comedy Central, TBS, IFC, E!, Cartoon Network and in indie films at Sundance and SXSW, along with big-budget features. She's also host of the podcast, Queery
READERS:
Round 1:
* Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane, her writing appears in New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Electric Literature, LA Times, Georgia Review, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, and more
* Geoff Dyer, author of the all-new The Last Days Of Roger Federer And Other Endings, along with four novels, nine non-fiction books, he's won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, and was named GQ’s Writer of the Year in 2009
Round 2:
* Amelia Gray, author of Isadora and Threats; winner of NYPL's Young Lion and the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, finalist for a WGA Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and writer for TV's Gaslit, Maniac and Mr. Robot
* Prince Shakur, a queer, Jamaican-American freelance journalist, cultural essayist, grassroots organizer and author of the debut memoir When They Tell You To Be Good, Winner of the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award
Hosted by LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga (author of the award-nominated novel Collision Theory)
Where: Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
When: October 19, 7:30pm sharp (doors at 6:30pm; over by 9:15pm)
Tickets: Free (Seats are first come, first served starting at 6:30 p.m. / Members receive priority ticketing until 15 minutes before the program)