Nick Tecosky counts down to a bout at Write Club Atlanta. (Photo by Annalise Kaylor)
This week, the longtime emcee will conclude a 15-year era.
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On June 11 at 8 p.m., Write Club Atlanta — the literary monthly event now at Dad’s Garage Theatre where local writers compete against one another in front of a raving crowd — marks the end of an era. Nicholas Tecosky, the host and a producer of the show since 2010, is stepping down as the emcee.
To celebrate Tecosky’s work as “viceroy” of Write Club Atlanta, this month’s show will feature a greatest hits collection of past performances from veteran local competitors, including Topher Payne, Nicki Harris Salcedo, Ryan Jones, Mark Kendall, Chris Alonzo and Evan Fulton. Tecosky will also compete one last time against his longtime adversary Jason Mallory.
For Tecosky, Write Club Atlanta was a transformative experience.
“When I did my first Write Club with Ian Belknap at PushPush Theatre, I was 30 years old,” he said. “It was 15 years ago. I was a young, scrappy fellow trying to make a name for himself. This show made me a better person. I was able to hear perspectives that I’d never heard before. I became a better listener.”
Write Club Atlanta follows a standard format. Two opposing writers are given topics two weeks prior to the event, and they are advised to create a new seven-minute piece to perform. The competitors know only what their topic is versus their opponent, like “up vs. down,” but they have free range to address that topic in any way they choose. The opponents know each other’s names, but they do not know what material they’re up against until they’re onstage performing it. The order of performance is determined randomly, using the game “rock, paper, scissors.”
The format originated in Chicago, designed by Belknap, and Write Club has been performed all over the country. But Write Club Atlanta, produced by Tecosky and Mykal Alder June, became its own unique success because of the depth of the talent pool in Atlanta.
“Especially in this world — especially with social media and this kind of constant barrage of news all of the time — we tend to shut away,” Tecosky said of the show’s appeal. “I think we have become more lonely and more reactionary. And the act of going into a community and hearing other people’s voices right in front of you means a lot. I think that it opens us up. It keeps us from becoming these beings with narrow worldviews. I think it’s necessary for the health of a society to understand the people around you or to make an attempt. This show allows people to understand diverse views.”
Payne said the founders of Write Club Atlanta took local writers out of isolation and gave them a platform.
“When we got to know each other as storytellers, we became exponentially more invested in each other’s stories,” Payne said in a statement. “Whether by accident or design, Nick was the catalyst for the creation of a community. That fundamentally changed the Atlanta literary landscape.”
Harris, a novelist, columnist and regular combatant, said she was nervous when Tecosky invited her to Write Club in 2015, but he told her that she would “kill it” onstage.
“I soon learned that the Write Club stage was a place to kill your fear, kill your isolation,” she said. “You aren’t really competing with another writer but with yourself. Nick wanted us to fight for the best words and the most evocative stories. Nick pushed us to be our truest selves onstage for six minutes, 59 seconds. He cares about nurturing all kinds of voices, even mine — a self-proclaimed soccer mom and nerd. I’m not kidding when I say he’s changed my life.”
In an email, Belknap praised Tecosky’s abilities as host and producer.
“As producer, you need sound curatorial instincts for pitting the right talents against each other, for picking broad-yet-specific topics that touch at least obliquely on the prevailing zeitgeist,” Belknap said. “As host, you have a twofold obligation. In the moment, you need to direct and shape the energy of the crowd. And more broadly over time, you’re on the hook to educate the audience about the ethos the show seeks to embody. Nowhere in all the enterprise’s history has this particular, peculiar set of capacities and skills been more fully in evidence than in the singular smartypants weirdo that is Nick Tecosky.”
Belknap said Tecosky and Write Club’s impact upon the Atlanta arts community is profound.
“Atlanta’s cultural scene has been enlivened by his tenure as viceroy,” he said. “But Write Club overall has been deepened and made better by his having consented all those years ago to be a part of it. Words are not adequate to express our gratitude.”
Tecosky is stepping down as host for a variety of reasons, though he will continue to produce the show.
“What it boils down to is I think we grow and change, and I have other things in my life that I want to focus on, and I want to try new things out in the world,” he said. “That show deserves a host who wants to put all of their energy into it. And my energy has just been in 50 different places, and I didn’t want the show to suffer.”
Longtime producer, writer and performer Dani Herd will step in as the new Write Club host.
“Dani has all of the energy that I had when I started and has ideas for how to move the show forward,” Tecosky said. “I feel like I did about as much as I could do with the show, and I wanted to hand it over to somebody who loved it as much as I did.”
Tecosky’s plan for the future involves writing, directing and producing more podcasts, such as the upcoming Havoc Town for iHeartMedia, which will star Jewel Staite, James Callis and Ray Wise. He said that because of Write Club, other anthology podcasts he’s created — such as 13 Days of Halloween — have been written by Atlanta talent, many he discovered through the show.
“I would put our community of writers up against any other community in the world,” he said.
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.
