A lone microphone sat atop the stage at Metro, and below stood a raucous crowd of more than 900 literary aficionados-all waiting for 12 wordsmiths to battle it out for a championship title that has brought both published writers and average-Joes together to out-dazzle each other in a rhetorical survival of the fittest.

It was a literary moshpit, as founder Bill Hillmann likes to call it, but otherwise it was just another average night for the Windy City Story Slam.

Hatched nearly a year ago by Hillmann, a fiction writing graduate student at Columbia, the Windy City Story Slam came about moreso out of necessity than for recreation. After performing at the poetry slam at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, 4802 N. Broadway, with Marc Smith-a forerunner of Chicago’s poetry slam scene-Hillmann found himself leaving one night wondering why such a thing didn’t exist for fiction or prose writing.

After a bit of brainstorming and getting the backing of other Columbia professors, like Don DeGrazia, a full-time faculty member in the Fiction Writing Department, Hillmann pulled a couple hundred dollars out of his pocket, distributed a few posters around campus and eventually found himself in a small basement where he and 12 others would begin the group’s first story slam.

“That night at the Metro was total pandamonium. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Hillmann said. “But we try to make the story slam a venue for emerging storytellers and writers-people who don’t really have a big name out there. We like to give young artists a chance by giving them a means to express themselves.”

The Windy City Story Slam has come a long way since its inception more than a year ago. After kicking off with a slow start, awareness of the group increased by word-of-mouth-and so did its audience, Hillmann said. Over the year, the Windy City Story Slam began filling basements throughout Chicago, and just this past month, they performed for a sold-out crowd at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St.

“There’s no gladhanding, no unnecessary and dishonest pats on the back like at a lot of places that encourage first-timers and open mic rookies, but it has always seemed like if you want to be a part of it and you are willing to give something and be respectful, they are more than happy to take you with them,” said Jasmine Neosh, a contributer to Windy City Story Slam. “Everybody gets a fair shot there, and I think that’s a really magical thing.”

A typical slam usually begins with a live music set by a local band, a short film or a monologue, Hillmann said. The slam consists of four to six readers sharing five-to-10 minute stories. The audience can either yell “Blah, blah, blah” or “More, more, more” in response to what they’re hearing, and eventually a winner is chosen by a round of applause.

On certain evenings, the group will host a feature event that serves as the biggest draw of the night. Back in June, Irvine Welsh-a friend of Hillmann’s and the author of Trainspotting-attended the event and brought in more than 300 people.

“I’ll never forget that night,” Hillmann said. “It was so hot-we were all packed into this room, and the audience kept getting rowdier and all of a sudden heat lightning struck right outside the door and the room filled with this bright, white light. It was fitting for the evening-there was so much energy in that small room.”

The slammers usually bring in real-life stories to tell onstage, and every so often, the stories are complete fiction. But all stories, true or not, are exaggerated, said Nicolette Kittinger, a senior fiction writing major at Columbia and six-month competitor of the Windy City Story Slam. The readers themselves are just as diverse as the stories they’re telling.

“We’ve seen everyone at the story slams,” Kittinger said. “Much of the crowd is Columbia students, but then you’ll get a more unusual lot-hookers, ball chasers from beyond the walls of Wrigley, druggies, yuppie gentrifiers. You know, your usual neighborhood folks who have their own unique stories to tell.”

On Feb. 13, Jim Goad, author of Redneck Manifesto, will be the featured guest at the group’s next story slam session and is a writer that Hillmann calls one of the most controversial writers of the current times.

In April, the Windy City Story Slam will travel to Philadelphia to compete with the local Slam outpost-First Person Arts-at the Philadelphia Book Fair, which is being sponsored by Columbia’s Fiction Writing Department, Hillmann said. The group is also aiming to go to Fringe Fest in Scotland in August-a trip that Hillmann plans to pay for out of his own pocket if the group can’t find sponsors in time.

“We’re still not sure how we’ll fund the trip, but we’re confident we can make it happen,” Kittinger said. “That’s what I love about working with Bill, he shoots for the stars, plans big and gets s–t done.”