Literary Death Matches Claim No Real Casualties (Usually)

By Betsy Mikel in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 27, 2010 3:40PM

At the typical Literary Death Match, spoken and written word geniuses duel until only one single man or woman remains. The duel may be a lemonade-off. Or muzakal chairs. Maybe even a hoopstravanganza. Really, the final round can be almost anything, but strangely, it's never literary-related, even though the word "literary" is in the event's title. Furthermore, the whole reason Literary Death Matches exist is to raise money and awareness for the hugest, most ambitious humor literary anthology Opium Magazine has ever created. So why are the writers squeezing lemons and playing musical chairs?

"It is a very literary event," says Todd Zuniga, who is bringing the 87th installment of the Literary Death Match to Chicago tonight, "but it's dressed up for people outside of that community." The literary stuff happens before the wacky finale. The Death Matches start off NCAA-bracket style, with writers competing against each other by reading seven-minute pieces. Judges then vote the best of each bracket to the next round. By having writers do ridiculous off-the-wall stuff in the finale round, Zuniga and his crew can present them in a fun, not-too-serious way. The Literary Death Matches are trying to fight that sense of feeling lost and overwhelmed when you walk into a bookstore and don't know what book to buy. "Our big goal is to pair literature to the pop culture conversation," says Zuniga. In every city where the Literary Death Match tour passes through, Zuniga reaches out to local literary publications and literary community to ask writers to participate. The finale competitors in each city have their own pointless task to complete to determine the winner of that particular match.

It's all in the name of Opium Magazine, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary with Opium100: A Century of Literary Humor, a hardcover anthology of "the stories, poems, cartoons and artwork we would’ve published had we been around for the last 100 years." It's going to cost $18,000 to publish. Over the course of this 12-city Literary Death Match tour, they have raised somewhere between $1,600 and $2,000 of it. Zungia admits the fundraising is only part of the point. "It's so important in the literary magazine world just to let people know you exist," he says. "It's about making noise and having fun and convincing people we're doing the right thing." As far as he's concerned, the Literary Death Matches do exactly that. As long as he can make enough money to keep bringing the event to more cities and getting the word about Opium out to more people, it’s a grand success. The less they can charge, the better. Because according to Zuniga, the best Literary Death Matches include "more people loud cheering free."

Tonight's Literary Death Match is at Columbia College's Conway Center, 1104 S Wabash Ave. It starts at 7 p.m., and it's free.