Eastercon Diary – Easter Sunday 27th March 2016 – Author Reading Open Mic

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Another high activity event for me at a two hour poetry and short story reading event. Though presented as an open mic session it was actually a slam competition, judged by randomly selected members of the audience who were given numbers on poles to hold up to say what they thought of the writers performing, though bizarrely several competitors themselves got to judge other performers, so voting was visibly getting quite tactical. The reading standards were consistently high, with five of the 14 writers tying for first place with 54 points and me right behind them with 52. While many of us presented tried and tested performance writing and published work, one lad boldly read a piece written just hours before the competition started so he could participate. Thank you to compere and fine competitor himself, Nick Larter. Arthur Chappell