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Category: books
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Robert K. Elder shares memories from THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE May 10th
Award-winning author, former rock photographer and journalist Robert K. Elder has composed the perfect walk down music memory lane in THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE: A Do-It-Yourself Music Memoir (Running Press; Trade Paperback Original; ISBN-13: 978-0762464074; 192 Pages/ $14.99).
THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE is a journal that guides user to write their autobiography through their music collection.
Sample questions from the book include:
What song or artist can’t you listen to because of a past romance?
What songwriter lied to or misled you?
What song allows you to time travel — that brings back a time and place so strongly that it’s palpable?No matter which musical generation you belong to, or whether your musical tastes range from doo-wop to Daft Punk, THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE can be instant conversation starter among friends and family.
Also enjoy work from these fine readers!
Andrew Huff
Liz Mason
Lou Carlozo“We all know that music is deeply intertwined with memory. The Mixtape of My Life is an astonishing tool for unlocking your long-forgotten histories.”
—Jason Bitner, author, Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves
Elder is the author of seven books, including 2016’s Hidden Hemingway. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, and many other publications. He has worked for Sun-Times Media and Crain Communications, and is the founder of Odd Hours Media.
For more info, visit: mixtapeofmylife.com
Thursday, May 10, 7pm – 8pm
Free Event
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Georgia Webber Reads From Dumb: Living Without a Voice 5/31
Toronto-based cartoonist Georgia Webber’s new book, Dumb (Fantagraphics Books), Part memoir, part medical cautionary tale, Dumb tells the story of how the book’s author copes with the everyday challenges that come with voicelessness. Webber adroitly uses the comics medium to convey the practical hurdles she faced as well as the fear and dread that accompanied her increasingly lonely journey to regain her life. Her raw cartooning style, occasionally devolving into chaotic scribbles, splotches of ink, and overlapping montages, perfectly captures her frustration and anxiety. But her ordeal ultimately becomes a hopeful story. Throughout, she learns to lean on the support of her close friends, finds self-expression in creating comics, and comes to understand and appreciate how deeply her voice and identity are intertwined.
“Webber wields the full power of the comics medium to address the life-changing catastrophe of being forced into silence.”
– Broken Frontier
Georgia Webber is a cartoonist living in Toronto, where she is a freelance comics in addition to editing the comics section of carte blanche. She is best known for Dumb, her autobiographical comics series about living with a vocal disability.
For more info:
Media inquiries to: cohen@fantagraphics.com
Thursday, May 31st 7pm – Free Event
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Justin O'Brien Reads From Chicago Yippie! '68
Justin O’Brien’s new book Chicago Yippie! ’68 (Garret Room Books) is a true chronicle of his experiences during the week of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. What promised to be a music festival and protest against the war in Vietnam turned into a “police riot,” as deemed by the official investigation report, Rights in Conflict. This historic event, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has relevant echoes in the protests of today. Even other participants have been amazed by this detailed description of events. O’Brien’s gripping narrative is interwoven with additional eyewitness accounts and includes more than 150 color and black and white photos—most of them never before published, and three original maps help the reader pinpoint the action. Handbills, posters, newspapers, political buttons, and other paraphernalia—all from the author’s collection—provide fascinating visual references and offer graphic evidence of this historic Chicago moment.
“Justin O’Brien seemingly was ever-present during 1968’s Chicago Convention Week. His lively recollections from the streets and the parks resurrect a polarized time of counterculture protest and potential.”
—Abe Peck, Professor Emeritus in Service, Northwestern University;
Author, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press“There is no book more loyal to the events that occurred over four August days in Chicago in 1968 than Justin O’Brien’s riveting Chicago Yippie! ’68. With his lucid, engaging prose, O’Brien effortlessly unwinds the various discordant threads that were so tightly woven into the fabric of the anti-war movements that defined the 1960s. Chicago Yippie! ’68 will take you back to a place that time may have muted, but that Mr. O’Brien has never forgotten.”
—Pat OwensWith more than 400 by-lines on a variety of subjects, Justin O’Brien has written extensively about blues music over a forty-year period, and for several decades has been associated with Living Blues magazine of the University of Mississippi. His work has also appeared in Juke Blues, Sing Out!, UIC Alumni News, Chicago Parent, Digital Chicago, Southern Graphics, and other publications. He has contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Blues (Routledge Press, 2005), Armitage Avenue Transcendentalists (Charles Kerr, 2009), and Base Paths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball (Wm. Brown, 1991), to which, coincidentally, former Senator Eugene McCarthy, the “peace candidate” of 1968, wrote a foreword.
Friday, March 23, 7 p.m. – Free Event
For more info: garretroom.com
Facebook invite for this event here!
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Nick Drnaso launches Sabrina on Thurs, May 24th, Interviewed by Jessica Campbell
When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister Sandra struggles to fill her days waiting in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.
The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s LA Times Book Prize winning Beverly, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. An indictment of our modern state, Sabrina contemplates the dangers of a fake news climate. Timely and articulate, Drnaso’s graphic novel leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.
At this event, Chicago-based cartoonist Jessica Campbell will interview Nick Drnaso. Her new book XTC69 is in stock now! In it, a commander with the same name as the author of the planet L8DZ N1T3 and her crew are searching for men to breed with when they discover the last human on Earth, the cryogenically frozen Jessica Campbell. With a new, but familiar crewmember, the search for men continues, but will it be worth it?
“Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina is the best book—in any medium—I have read about our current moment. It is a masterpiece, beautifully written and drawn, possessing all the political power of polemic and yet simultaneously all the delicacy of truly great art. It scared me. I loved it.”—Zadie Smith
Nick Drnaso was born in 1989 in Palos Hills, Illinois. His debut graphic novel, Beverly, received the LA Times Book prize for Best Graphic Novel. He has contributed to several comics anthologies, self-published a handful of comics, been nominated for three Ignatz Awards, and co-edited the second and third issue of Linework, Columbia College’s annual comic anthology. Drnaso lives in Chicago, where he works as a cartoonist and illustrator.
For more info:
Julia Pohl-Miranda and Sruti Islam at publicity@drawnandquarterly.com
Thurs, May 24th, 7pm – Free Event
Quimby’s Bookstore, Chicago, IL quimbys.com
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Press about Sabrina!:
Chicago Magazine
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Reader -
“Godzilla” Director Ishiro Honda’s New Biography Presented by Author Ed Godziszewski at Quimby’s 10/13
Godzilla first laid waste to Tokyo more than 60 years ago in a symbolic reenactment of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. But even as the monster has become recognizable worldwide, the filmmaker who brought it to the screen has remained in Godzilla’s giant shadow.
Ed Godziszewski comes to Quimby’s Bookstore to present ISHIRO HONDA: A LIFE IN FILM, FROM GODZILLA TO KUROSAWA, the first major overview of the life and career of Ishiro Honda, the director behind the original GODZILLA and many of its beloved sequels and spin-offs of the 1950s and ‘60s. Godziszewski, a lifelong Chicagoan, is one of the leading scholars of Japanese science-fiction and fantasy cinema and publisher of JAPANESE GIANTS magazine. He co-wrote the book with Steve Ryfle, also a noted genre scholar. Nearly 10 years in the research and writing, the book is published by Wesleyan University Press.
Honda was the most internationally successful Japanese director of his generation, with an unparalleled succession of genre movies that were commercial hits worldwide, including MOTHRA, RODAN, THE MYSTERIANS, and many others. Honda’s films reflected postwar Japan’s real-life anxieties and incorporated fantastical special effects, a formula that still appeals to audiences around the globe. The new book sheds light on this long-overlooked director’s work and the experiences that shaped it—including his days as a reluctant Japanese soldier, his witnessing of the aftermath of Hiroshima, and his lifelong friendship with Akira Kurosawa.
“This carefully researched and detailed book gives us a full picture of the man and his life.” — Martin Scorsese
For more info:
Facebook Event Invite for this Event.
Fri, Oct 13th, 7pm Free Event
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Coco Picard presents "Autobiography with Stones" from The Chronicles of Fortune 9/22
On Friday, September 22nd at 7pm, Coco Picard presents “Autobiography with Stones” a diagrammed artist talk about rocks, foreign encounters, and possible futures. This performative lecture is based on a dream Picard had in which the protagonist of her graphic novel, The Chronicles of Fortune (Radiator Comics, 2017), is hired by the government to psychoanalyze non-human kinds in a post-apocalyptic world. Picard explores the potential of this prospective narrative in relation to famous rocks she has encountered and Dr. Rock, her exhibition at Franklin Gallery where visitors were invited to tell their troubles to a stone. Following the lecture, Picard will sign copies of her graphic novel.
Originally published as a series of minicomics, The Chronicles of Fortune is a quirky and idiosyncratic adventure of Fortuna, the greatest superhero who could do anything to improve the world (and her alter-ego, Edith-May) but is tragically stricken with ennui, as they learn to cope with loss and recruit a team of friends along the way. At once charming, sad, funny, poignant, and bizarre, The Chronicles of Fortune includes a temperamental stove, a nosy mountain, a goofy crocodile, a loner moth, and a singing goldfish as they lead Fortuna on her greatest adventure.
Coco Picard is an artist, writer and curator based out of Chicago where she founded The Green Lantern Press and co-founded Sector 2337. Her critical writing appears under the name Caroline Picard in Art21, Artforum, Artslant, and Hyperallergic. Astrophil Press recently published her long-form cat essay, The Strangers Among Us and forthcoming novel, TSK, is due out from Goldwake Press in 2019. cocopicard.com
The Chronicles of Fortune is the first book published by Radiator Comics, a comics distributor run by former Quimby’s employee Neil Brideau, also a founding member of Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE [the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo]. radiatorcomics.com
Praise for The Chronicles of Fortune
“In the guise of a fantastical hero comedy, The Chronicles of Fortune is a story about succumbing to and triumphing over loss and grief in all its forms…” – Hyperallergic
“…each facet of [The Chronicles of Fortune’s] publication illustrates how, when publishers, distributors, and creators are truly invested in a work, the result will be wonderful.”-Women Write About Comics
“The Chronicles Of Fortune stands as a confirmation of the misfit’s path in life. Not only is it okay to be different, it’s okay to look like a failure in the eyes of others. Who cares? Just you, you’re the only one who needs to care. And are you happy? That seems to be what Picard is asking.” – Comics Beat
“Edith May/Fortuna’s urban adventures are reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland’s vignettes. With the appearance of Death as the ultimate foe, Picard creates a superhero with emotional resonance and a deeply empathetic story of one woman re-entering the world.” – Chicago Artist Writers
“You should buy The Chronicles of Fortune, read it, then share it with someone you love.” – Entropy
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Quimby’s Welcomes Four Midwest Authors: Berg, Fouts, Krecklow, & Tanzer 8/25
Four Midwest Authors to Read From Their Most Recent Work at Quimby’s 8/25:
Berg, Fouts, Krecklow, & Tanzer Converge in ChicagoIn Lee L. Krecklow’s debut novel The Expanse Between when former writer and social recluse Thomas Stone witnesses through his window a violent fight between his neighbor and her boyfriend, the scene ignites memories that, years earlier, inspired his only celebrated novel.
With Seth Berg’s Aviary, written with Bradford Wolfenden II, two poets enter, one voice exits. Collaborative poetry is a conversation and when it’s done right it feels both unique to the individual poets and a comfortable fit with their solo work.
From Ben Tanzer comes a memoir about one of life’s true complexities: being cool. Written in touching vignettes, like snapshots of history, Tanzer eloquently illuminates his past with humor and resolve. Be Cool is a confession to a generation of readers, done so with acute precision and utmost trust.
Seth Berg is a hatchet-wielding forest-dweller who digs tasty hallucinatory literature. His second book, Aviary, was released by Civil Coping Mechanisms in January of 2017.
Tasha Fouts poems have appeared in Salt Hill, Bateau, and Birds Piled Loosely. She currently co-hosts the Soundcloud podcast Adventures in Television.
Lee L. Krecklow is the author of The Expanse Between (Winter Goose Publishing, 2017). He won the 2016 storySouth Million Writers Award for his story The Son of Summer and Eli.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the newly released book Be Cool – a memoir (sort of), among others. He also oversees the lifestyle empire This Blog Will Change Your Life.Here’s the Facebook invite for this event!
Fri, Aug 25th 7pm – Free Event
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Offsite: Summer Wicker Park Book Swap at the Wicker Park Farmers Market
From 8am-2pm once a month on selected Sundays! Bring a book! Leave a book! Enjoy a book! At Wicker Park, 1425 N. Damen Ave. Sunday, July 23rd, 9am-1am!
At the end of the summer, the books that remain will be donated to Open Books to aid in their continual creation and support of literacy programs in Chicago.
Here’s the Facebook event invite for it.
See you there!
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Quimby's Welcomes Christina Ward: PRESERVATION The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration 7/13
Christina Ward is a Master Food Preserver and doesn’t want you to kill Aunt Edna with a jar of pickles. Her book, Preservation: The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration (Process Media, Inc.) explains the science, the concepts, and techniques that will help me make delicious and nutritious foods. (And keep Aunt Edna alive.)
She’ll talk about food preservation history, how women were left out of that history, and the cutting-edge research about our gut biomes. She’ll also share the secret to consistent food safety. (Spoiler: wash your damn hands.) Come for the door prizes, stay for the science!
“Between the understandable yet solid science, and the direct, no-nonsense, yet delicious-sounding recipes, it is without hesitation that I encourage you to read this book from cover to cover.” –Nancy Singleton Hachisu, James Beard nominated writer of Preserving the Japanese Way and Japanese Farm Food
“It’s really cool!” –Daniel Gritzer, Culinary Director, Serious Eats
Christina Ward’s work has been featured in The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, Remedy Quarterly, Edible Milwaukee, Serious Eats, The Runcible Spoon, and more. She has been featured on podcasts and radio shows such as Central Time (WPR) and Arts & Seizures (Heritage Radio).
For more info: www.processmediainc.com
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Thursday, July 13th 7pm – Free Event
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Nurse-cartoonist MK Czerwiec Reads From Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 5/25
MK Czerwiec’s (pronounced sir-wick) new book Taking Turns (Penn State University Press) shares the story of Unit 371, a shining example of excellence in the treatment and care of patients. Unit 371 was a community for thousands of patients and families affected by HIV and AIDS and the people who cared for them. This graphic novel combines Czerwiec’s memories with the oral histories of patients, family members, and staff. It depicts life and death in the ward, the ways the unit affected and informed those who passed through it, and how many look back on their time there today.
Deeply personal yet made up of many voices, this history of daily life in a unique AIDS care unit is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and hope among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the epidemic
“MK Czerwiec’s tales of her nursing work on an AIDS unit chart a remarkable episode in the history of medicine. Through the lives and deaths of individual patients, written and drawn in documentary detail, we see the power dynamic between doctor and patient begin to shift. When cure is not an option, care takes on a new meaning.” –Alison Bechdel
Czerwiec is a leader in the field of Graphic Medicine, which examines the intersection of comics and health, illness, and care giving. Czerwiec is a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto (Penn State University Press, 2015), which was nominated for an Eisner Award. She has also self-published three collections of comics, Comic Nurse, Comic Nurse Delivers Another Dose, and Scars, Stories, and Other Adventures.
For more info: www.comicnurse.com
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Thurs, May 25th, 7pm – Free Event