Tuesday, June 19th 2012 –

Casey Childers and Steven Westdahl hosted the seventh chapter of Write Club, held every third Tuesday at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco. The show consists of 3 rounds of 2 writers with 2 opposing ideas for 7 minutes each. The audience decides each round’s winner by making noise and a third of the night’s proceeds go to the charity of each winner’s choice.

This month’s theme was in honor of James Joyce, as Bloomsday had been just a few days before. Apparently, “quark” came from Finnegan’s Wake, so the 6 topics were the names of the different quarks: top vs. bottom, up vs. down, and strange vs. charm.

In the first round, Westdahl (charm) battled Sarah Griffin (strange).

In the second round, Casey Childers (up) battled Chris Cole (down).

In the final round, Joy Carletti (bottom) battled Colin Iago McCarthy (top).

You can watch the entire evening, including Westdahl’s impressively maniacal hosting abilities, above. I recommend it; having two friends in the show, I knew the readings were going to be good, but I was, quite honestly, shocked by the overall quality and diversity of the writing shared. This is a hard sell for me for several reasons: I hate themed shows; I don’t like in-your-face hosting; I don’t like literature as competition. Despite all of these things I am a fan of Write Club and recommend it heartily. See what’s up.

They do a show every third Tuesday, so the next installment will be July 17th. Until then, you can watch the show above or listen to the battles through their podcast, to which you can either subscribe here or listen through their website.