Unlike the original “Fight Club” movie led by Brad Pitt, Marquette’s Writer Fight Club’s first rule is to have fun.
Writer Fight Club has been a mainstay on campus for a while now.
“Writer Fight Club is a great way for participants to bond over their passion for writers they love — and be introduced to new writers. It also gives competitors a chance to practice reading aloud and being comfortable in front of an audience,” Brittany Pladek, an associate professor in the English department, said.
The competition takes place in the Raynor Library once a year and is comprised of a system of linguistic battles. There is a bracket created that pits participants against each other. Participants are then matched up to battle it out.
These battles take place in the form of reciting different pieces of literature.
“It boils down to a contest between writing fans who choose what they feel like is the best work of their favorite author or other artists and they use quotes to compete versus other people doing the same thing to gain the audience’s favor,” Jose Intriago Suarez, a Ph.D. student in the English department, said in an email.
The matchups are decided by audience polls. Online polls are also made available, and there is an entire team dedicated to keeping track of both the brackets created and voting.
Participants of the Writer Fight Club attest to its benefits not only for the English department but for participants as well.
“It’s great for developing stage confidence, it is not at all easy to stand there in front of strangers and show a unique side of yourself. But it is a great place to do so because the typical audience is also a fan of writing and literature so they will always support participants,” Intriago said in an email.
Apart from helping out with developing confidence, it also informs participants who might be avid readers on different writers and literary pieces to look into.
“Writer Fight Club is a great way for participants to bond over their passion for writers they love and be introduced to new writers It also gives competitors a chance to practice reading aloud and being comfortable in front of an audience,” Black said.
Although the competition has taken place for many years, there is some confusion as to when exactly it was established.
“I’m not exactly sure when it started, but probably over 10 years. There have been a couple of hiatuses like last year due to big things. I’ve been at Marquette for almost 3 years and only COVID stopped it last year,” Intriago said in an email.
The tradition has gone through many modifications, such as an online poll being made, and participants being able to make online predictions of the winners of different brackets, and there are talks of making the competition bi-yearly, one competition taking place every semester.
“I actually tried to go this semester, but I was a little busy. However, I think the event is a really good opportunity for anyone that likes to read and anybody that just wants to have fun and perform,” Ethan Evers, a freshman in the College of Communications said.
The competition, held by the English department, has few restrictions when it comes to what can and cannot be used as a source for contestants.
“This year we had two super interesting entries in Taylor Swift and an anonymous old English poet. For the first, one of the contestants chose to use T-swift lyrics to great effect: it was really fun to see them interact with other participants. The latter contestant used the Gawain poem in old English and through great delivery and animated presence showed an audience a great time,” Intriago said in an email.
In previous years, Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allen Poe, and even Kanye West have been used as sources for the battles.
This story was written by Clara Lebron. She can be reached at [email protected]
