If blogging was a way for writers to retreat at the start of this century, public performance of said written words seems to be the trend for this decade—raw, real storytelling at its most crafted yet natural form. These lit events don’t just connect storytellers with like-minded wordsmiths; they open up the experience of storytelling. How two of our favorites stack up.

	Write Club ATL	True Story!
In a nutshell	Storytelling as performance-art smackdown	Merging narrative nonfiction and oral history
What that means	In a literary twist on the debate, two writers get opposing topics and seven minutes each to present a masterpiece. The sound level and duration of listeners’ applause denote the winner.	Combines reading of published or in-progress nonfiction with show-and-tell; authors have brought unsent letters, childhood drawings, VHS recordings, and other artifacts.
Virtual extras	Podcasts, contributors posting to the club’s Local Voices blog	Visual aids, “artifacts” accompanying storytelling, podcasts
Sample participants	Memoirist Jessica Handler, blogger and author Andisheh Nouraee, novelist Daniel Black	Essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan, novelist Susan Rebecca White, journalists Thomas Lake and Candice Dyer
Details	Second Wednesday of each month 644 North Highland Avenue, writeclubatlanta.com	Every other month, Fridays Kavarna, 707 East Lake Drive, Decatur, truestoryga.com

Photograph of Nick Tecosky and Jason Mallory by Parker Davidson; photograph of Jamie Allen courtesy of True Story! This article originally appeared in our December 2012 issue.

Lit Events

Write Club ATL Vs. True Story!