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Write Club Chicago

Literature as Bloodsport

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Why, I Autumn…!

The November Show

  • 11/17/2026
  • 7:30 PM
  • Gman Tavern, Chicago

Three bouts. Six writers.

The Bouts

Heartfelt appreciation to all who attended The Rising Price of Ghastly — long may your riotous cheers echo through the multi-story stacks of Valhalla’s library. Join us on 11/17/2026 for the November Show, featuring these epic literary battles:

01

Janna Sobel

HISTORY

Versus

Lily Be

MYTH

02

Carly Travis

MEAL

Versus

Tara Betts

SNACK

03

Carmenita Peoples

STREAK

Versus

Rammel Chan

SLUMP

Write Club is the world’s most visceral competitive essay series.

Once a month, we summon forth Chicago’s fiercest writers and performers to test their mettle against each other in pitched head-to-head contests. Each combatant enters the arena with only their prose skills and montage-trained voices, and leave with a bounty of either cash and glory or an even greater amount of cash and glory. Write Club is the live wire of Live Lit, the crucible in which ideas are distilled into their most potent form before being hurled mightily at the audience from a fine-tuned trebuchet. It's a bar fight...but with a time limit and words instead of fists.

Discover your new favorite wordsmiths, experience new mind-blowing perspectives, and start scheduling your life around your new monthly can’t-miss live event. Typically every third Tuesday at Gman Tavern.

“The punchiest thing to hit literature since Hemingway”

—Chicago Reader