Austin, Ep. 17

November 11, 2023 — Once again, Literary Death Match's annual visit to the Texas Book Festival was exceedingly brilliant, as we led off Lit Crawl Austin with an early-evening affair that was downright scintillating, as Shanteka Sigers narrowly beat out Kari Lavelle in a dramatic Literary Spelling Bee III finale winning Sigers the LDM Austin, Ep. 17 crown and literary immortality to go with it.

Here's the full lineup from the night-of: 

JUDGES: 
Literary Merit: Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian and author of Catherine the Great & Potemkin (short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction), Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (winner of the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards), and Young Stalin (winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Award, and le Grande Prix de la biographie politique)

Performance: Ling Ling Huang, violinist and author of the debut novel, Natural Beauty (Constance Wu and Drew Comins are producing a series adaptation). An active presence in the New York musical scene, she's appeared on stages from Carnegie Hall to National Sawdust

Intangibles: Tori Pool, writer, comedian, host and producer of Texas Public Radio's Worth Repeating podcast, co-editor of Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories and co-author of popular card game, Latino Card Revoked

READERS:
Round 1: 
* Cadwell Turnbull, author of the all-new We Are the Crisis, The Lesson (winner of the Neukom Institute Literary Award) and No Gods, No Monsters (winner of the Lambda Award, and a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award). His short fiction has appeared all over, and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018

* Kari Lavelle, author of Butt or Face?, We Move the World and the forthcoming An Ode to Grapefruit – a picture book biography of James Earl Jones. She's a member of Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Round 2:
* Shanteka Sigers, award-winning writer who has appeared in 2022 O. Henry Prize Winner Collection, 2021 Best American Short Stories, the Paris Review, Freeman’s, NPR Selected Shorts, and the Chicago Reader

* Elise Hu, author of Flawless, correspondent and host at-large for NPR, the inaugural host of TED Talks Daily, and her work has earned the national DuPont Columbia, Edward R. Murrow and Gracie awards, along with a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism

Hosted by LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga (author of the award-nominated novel Collision Theory)

Where: Gin Bar, 1813 E 6th St, Austin (map) — for ADA entrance, go through the hotel Arrive Austin