A month ago I was at a party in Paris when I first met Todd Zuniga of Opium Magazine who also runs Literary Death Match. Being English, I made the unguarded comment, 'You should do that in Oxford. Everyone there's a writer.' Being American, he replied, terrifyingly, 'Sure - how about the first week in November?'.
Luckily I know Xander Cansell, Oxford's literary Mr Fix. Despite a slow start persuading people to be involved (might have been something to do with the word 'death' in the title*?) we ended up with a fine line-up including judges: multi-award winning poet and writer, Kate Clanchy; Idler editor, Dan Kieran and last-minute (I mean literarlly 30 minutes before) replacement for Tom Greeves, Ben Walker, who was not only lanconically hilarious but improvised on his guitar to order.
Reading were the fabulous Jake Wallis-Simons, Miranda Ward, Megan Kerr and LDM champion, George Chopping ('the love child of Hugh Grant and John Hegley' - Kate Clanchy). Here he is:
The pen is mightier than the sword. Those who live by the pen, die by the pen (or perhaps by a particularly savage game of musical chairs...).
Oh yes, and I did some live drawing...
(Poster and bad photo by me. Good photos by Garrett Coakley)
*No living authors were harmed during the making of this event.
This looks so wonderful. Not to mention your lovely live sketches. I'm going to go research Literary Death Match for a while, but I pre-emptively approve of the whole enterprise.
Posted by: Sally | November 11, 2009 at 03:43 PM
I hear they're fermenting a Dublin match: be sure to get involved...
Posted by: badaude | November 11, 2009 at 05:41 PM
more photographs of you
Posted by: Mevr. Haus | November 12, 2009 at 08:59 AM
That's certainly a statement. But is is an observation or a request?
Posted by: badaude | November 12, 2009 at 10:27 AM
Is that really you in the photo?
It's a great initiative and congratulations for getting it off the ground. I'm originally from Reading, just down the road, and despite it's rather apt name, I can't imagine any such event taking place there!
Posted by: Adam | November 13, 2009 at 10:06 AM
That's me. I'm notoriously camera-shy. Maybe that's why I draw...
Posted by: badaude | November 13, 2009 at 10:57 AM