What It Is
What Is Write Club?
WHAT IS WRITE CLUB?
WRITE CLUB is the world's greatest competitive reading series, featuring only the most audacious and fearsome of writers and performers. It’s live lit at iTS MOST VIBRANT AND VISCERAL.
WHAT IS LIVE LIT?
STORYTELLIng…if it were a performed essay
The term “live lit” is one many folks outside of Chicago haven’t heard, and we plan to change that. Coined by Write Club Founder and Overlord, Ian Belknap, live lit is a style of performance that is similar to (and lives under the umbrella of) storytelling. But while storytelling emphasizes the narrative, live lit is an essay that is performed by its author - and that performance matters just as much as the writing of the essay. As for what this gives an audience, an author, and a performer, we’ll let Ian tell it in this 2019 article from the Chicago Reader:
”If we are to progress, or even simply to endure, our shows must cleave to what live lit remains at its essence, which is after all what makes it exciting: a readily accessible means of direct public self-expression, a forum for truth telling and revelation without adornment or pyrotechnics. One of the great virtues of live lit is its “low prestige factor,” in that the barriers to entering as a practitioner are really, really low: none of us who produce these shows need your CV, there are no conservatory programs where you can earn an MFA in live lit, there is no “dues paying” in the sense of doing a shitload of open mikes before you’re deemed “ready.” If you want in, all you need to do is ask.”
WRITE CLUB is:
3 bouts of
2 opposing writers/2 opposing ideas (assigned in advance)
7 minutes apiece
Audience picks a winner by applause
Winner gets $100
Loser gets $50
Every 3rd Tuesday (except for special shows) at the GMan Tavern in Chicago, IL
“The punchiest thing to hit literature since Hemingway”
A Few Accolades
“Best of Chicago,” Chicago Magazine 2024 “Best Brainy Battle of Words” “Best Literary Event," 2013 Chicago Reader Poll
"Readers Choice for Best Reading Series," 2013 Creative Loafing Atlanta
"Best Live Reading Series," 2013 Chicago Magazine's Best of Chicago
"Top Five of Everything," 2013 New City Year-End Issue
"Best Reinvention of Reading Series," 2012 Creative Loafing Atlanta