Brisbane, Ep. 2

May 11, 2023 — After last year's smash-hit debut, Literary Death Match returned to the glorious Brisbane Writers Festival for an electrifying night at Queensland State Library where the audience saw Siang Lu narrowly outduel co-finalist Shirley Le in a whizbang Author Spelling Bee finale that won Lu the LDM Brisbane, Ep. 2 crown, and literary immortality to go with it. 

Here's the full lineup from the night of: 

JUDGES: 
Literary Merit: Gabrielle Zevin, internationally-bestselling and critically-acclaimed author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry; the prizewinning children's book, Elsewhere; and the hit novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (being developed into a feature film by Temple Hill and Paramount Studios)

Performance: Jess Ho, author of Raised by Wolves, host and producer of the Bad Taste podcast, a regular presenter at food and wine events and festivals across Melbourne, along with being the former food and drink editor for Time Out Melbourne

Intangibles: Claire Christian, storyteller, playwright, theatre maker and author of Beautiful Mess (winner of the Text Publishing Text Prize) and It’s Been A Pleasure, Noni Blake. Her play Lysa and The Freeborn Dames debuted in 2018, and she's directed Michelle Law’s smash-hit comedy Single Asian Female since 2017

READERS: 
Round 1: 
* Shirley Le, a Vietnamese-Australian writer from Western Sydney, author of the debut novel Funny Ethnics, a Creative Producer at Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement

* Myles McGuire, writer and presenter from Brisbane, he's been published in Griffith Review, Overland and Voiceworks, and nominated for the Peter Carey Short Story Award, among other prizes

Round 2:
* Benjamin Stevenson, an award-winning stand-up comedian who's appeared on ABCTV, Channel 10 and The Comedy Channel, is author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, Greenlight (shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction), and Either Side of Midnight (shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Original Paperback)

* Siang Lu, author of The Whitewash which won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer, co-creator of The Beige Index, he's been forced to deny rumours that he's the secret author of Huxtable Heights, a #MeToo work of underground lit that mashes up Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and The Cosby Show by replacing all of Heathcliff's original dialogue with lines uttered by Heathcliff Huxtable AKA Bill Cosby

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

Where: State Library of Queensland (Auditorium 1), Stanley Pl, South Brisbane (map)