San Antonio, Ep. 4

April 14, 2023 — In a long-awaited return to Alamo City, Literary Death Match once again partnered with the San Antonio Book Festival to headline the fest's new Lit Happens at Legacy Park, an event that saw Jonny Garza Villa topple Rubén Degollado by a single point during an Arithme-Lit finale to win Garza Villa the LDM San Antonio, Ep. 4 crown, and literary immortality to go with it.

Here's the full lineup from the night: 

JUDGES: 
Literary Merit: Jenny Lawson, award-winning blogger, proprietress of San Antonio's Nowhere Bookshop and best-selling author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Furiously Happy, YOU ARE HERE and Broken (In the Best Possible Way)

Performance: Marisela Barrera, Tejana writer and teatrista, Artistic Director of Cara Mia Theater, Theater Director at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, and winner of the 2021 Luminaria Artist Foundation Award

Intangibles: Maddy “Skye” Mendoza, writer, journalist for Axios, and a Columbia Journalism School fellow

READERS: 
Round 1: 
* Jonny Garza Villa, author of contemporary YA with characters and settings inspired by their own Tejane, Chicane, and queer identities, including the all-new Ander & Santi Were Here and Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, a Pura Belpré Honor Book. 

* Bobby Finger, a Texas native who lives in Brooklyn, he's author of the debut novel, The Old Place and co-host of the popular celebrity and entertainment podcast, Who? Weekly 

Round 2:
* Kimberly Garza, author of the debut novel The Last Karankawas (one of Audible's Best of 2022), she was born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde and is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio

* Rubén Degollado, an educator since 1994, he's the award-winning author of The Family Izquierdo, a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2022 which was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the young adult novel, Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters 2020 Award for Best Young Adult Book

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

Produced by Anna Dobben & Lilly Gonzalez

Books will be for sale from Nowhere Bookshop.

Where: Legacy Park, San Antonio (click for a map)
When: April 14, 8pm as part of Lit Happens
Cost: Free / 21+