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Category: Event
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Anders Nilsen Celebrates Big Questions at Lula Cafe with Quimby's 8/30
Anders Nilsen’s graphic novel collection of Big Questions is coming out, and we’re going to celebrate with him at Lula Cafe on August 30th at 7pm.
A haunting postmodern fable, Big Questions is the magnum opus of Anders Nilsen, one of the brightest and most talented young cartoonists working today. This beautiful and minimalist story, collected here for the first time, is the culmination of ten years and over 600 pages of work that details the metaphysical quandaries of the occupants of an endless plain, existing somewhere between a dream and a Russian steppe. A downed plane is thought to be a bird and the unexploded bomb that came from it is mistaken for a giant egg by the group of birds whose lives the story follows. The indifferent and stranded pilot is of great interest to the birds–some doggedly seek his approval, while others do quite the opposite, leading to tensions in the group. Nilsen seamlessly moves from humor to heartbreak. His distinctive, detailed line work is paired with plentiful white space and large, often frameless panels, conveying an ineffable sense of vulnerability and openness.
Big Questions has roots in classic fable–the story’s birds and snakes have more to say than their human counterparts and there are hints of the classic hero’s journey, but the easy moral that closes most fables is left here as open and ambiguous. Rather than lending its world meaning, Nilsen’s parable lets the questions wander out to go where they will.
Paperback, 7.25 x 9.25, colour, 658 pages
Anders will be joined by John Porcellino of King-Cat Comics and Stories, and local fiction writer Kyle Beachy (The Slide) and Zak Sally (Like a Dog Recidivist, former bassist of Low, editor of La Mano Press).
Please note that this event is NOT AT QUIMBY’S!
It is at Lula Cafe which is at 2537 N. Kedzie Blvd, Chicago
lulacafe.com
773-489-9554 -
Carrie McGath Reads From So Sorry to See You Go
Carrie McGath’s first collection of poems, Small Murders, was released in 2006 from New Issues Poetry and Prose. Ward-Eighty-One and The Chase are her self-published, limited-edition collections released in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Her newest self-published chapbook, So Sorry to See You Go is in a limited 50-edition run with the cover design by Bailey Romaine. The poems are inspired by Carrie’s thesis research at the Newberry Library about the presence of the circus in the Midwest. Carrie grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown’s strange persona remains with Carrie, along with her dark Irish ancestral roots seeped in secrets, illness, and superstition. Carrie currently lives in Chicago where she is a poet, visual artist and art writer for Chicago Art Magazine She also contributes to Art:21 Blog’s “Open Enrollment” column. Her blog dollwork.org is devoted to film, literature, art, and other nooks of culture where dolls appear. She lives with her sweet and spoiled cats, Seamus and Hortense.“Juxtaposing imagery of fractured delicacy, birds’ wings, eggshells and doll’s heads, with uncompromising hardness of gun barrels and wooden chests, she captures an uncanny world where a semblance of normality veils overripe fantasies and violence.” ~~ Aisha Motiani, Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express
For more info: carriemcgath.com
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Save the Date! Chicago Zine Fest 2012 Dates Announced!
The 2012 Chicago Zine Fest will take place Friday and Saturday, March 9th & 10th of 2012! For Saturday’s Zine Exhibition, it will return to Columbia’s Conaway Center as the first two years.
Stay tuned to chicagozinefest.org for updates.
Also, perhaps you attended last years? Fill out a short survey to provide feedback to help make 2012’s extra awesome here: http://bit.ly/kL7sIz
And hey! Here’s some highlights from Chicago Zine Fest 2011:
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Cindy Crabb Reads From The Encyclopedia of Doris 9/3
Cindy Crabb has been writing the influential, internationally distributed, autobiographical-feminist zine Doris since the early ‘90’s. Her new book, The Encyclopedia of Doris, brings together the last 10 years of zines and a ton of new writing as well. In it, she explores subjects like consent, feminism, abortion, death, self-image, creativity, shyness, queer identity, addiction, punk and anarchism. Crabb is the editor of the zines Support and Learning Good Consent. She lives in South-East Ohio with her miniature horses, plays in the punk band Snarlas, and is a sexual abuse survivor advocate.“…zines are a space where third wave feminist theory is emerging, and many scholars don’t recognize this because they don’t read zines. They should read Doris.” –Alison Piepmeier, Author of Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism
Cindy Crabb’s work has been featured in such places as: The Utne Reader, Maximum Rock and Roll, and Cometbus. Her work has also been in such anthologies as We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists; Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women’s Word; and A Girls Guide to Taking Over the World: Writing From the Girl Zine Revolution. Her diaries and papers are housed at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. She has spoken at colleges, libraries and community centers across the country.
For more info: dorisdorisdoris.com/
Sat, Sep 3rd, 7pm
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Christopher Boucher reads from How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive with Adam Levin (The Instructions) 8/24
By the time Christopher Boucher reaches Chicago he will have driven nearly 3,000 miles across America in his 1972 Volkswagen Beetle, reading from How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, playing the novel’s theme-song on his banjo, and reading to people, roadsigns, potholes, old barns, paramedics, flowers and railroad tracks. “I see this tour as a natural extension of the book,” he says. “The novel was written in a whimsical, playful style, but it was inspired by…my father, and the sense of wonder that he instilled in me. That sense of wonder propelled every sentence in the book, and I want it to fuel the tour as well.”In How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive Christopher Boucher has created a zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that calls to mind the off-kilter comedy and inspired fabulism of Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Saunders. The prose summersaults, but the book also tackles some of life’s biggest questions: How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?
“Writing to save your life—and your 1971 Volkswagen—is at the heart of this wildly imaginative debut… Readers are in for a fresh, memorable ride with this inventive ‘collage of loss’”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A new, exuberant novel-world. Goofiness and grief are in perfect harmony in this impressive, moving debut.”—Sam Lipsyte
Also joining the bill is Chicago author Adam Levin, author of The Instructions (McSweeney’s).
More info: mhpbooks.com vwalive.com theboucher.com mcsweeneys.net
Wed, August 24th, 7pm
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Alison Bechdel comes to Quimby's 10/8
Alison Bechdel is guest editing THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2011.“An insightful compilation.”—USA Today
It is widely acknowledge that comics is, by and large, a printed medium, and in the foreword of THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS 2011, series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden trace the evolutionary print trends of this art form – from Sunday pages and daily strips to fanzines and minicomics to a mail art movement and self-publishing faction. However, they also recognize that comics have invaded the digital medium, and many of the aforementioned DIY-ers have created a webcomics scene that parallels, yet doesn’t necessarily intersect with, the print world. In part as a reflection of this new trend, this year’s volume of THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS features a first for this series: Kate Beaton’s clever, buzz-worthy, and hilarious Hark! A Vagrant, the first included comic by an artist who emerged entirely from the webcomics scene.
Star guest editor Alison Bechdel, author of the seminal chronicle of lesbian lives and loves, Dykes To Watch Out For, and the highly-acclaimed graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, continues this reflection on comics trends in her introduction. Though she originally became a cartoonist because of its alternative, underground nature far from mainstream literary and art criticism, she acknowledges – and appreciates – the incredible growth spurt and popularity boost comics have undergone in the past decade.
Submission after submission, Bechdel writes, shows how cleverly, confidently, and infectiously young comics are playing with the balance of art and language. Selections like Brendan Leach’s Pterodactyl Hunters about fictionalized 1904 New York, Chris Ware’s Jordan Lint to 65 about the complete, fictionally-realized life of Jordan Lint, and Joe Sacco’s historiography, Footnotes in Gaza don’t fit neatly into a single category. And yet, many of these pieces address a metacomic theme, commenting on their own art form in some way – David Lasky’s cheeky send-up of recent trends in the ‘graphic novel’ phenomenon and Joey Allison Sayers’ Pet Cat, which investigates the negative qualities defining the more commercial reaches of the comicsphere.
And although Bechdel questions why there’s still such a gender disparity in the field, she also lauds the fact that female cartoonists are beginning to experience a form of freedom that she hopes will extend to the art form as a whole. “Freedom from having to explain or defend ourselves. Freedom from being confined to one section of the bookstore. Even freedom—one day, maybe—from books like this one.” And it is this liberation, this ability to “look just a little beyond the horizon” that truly defines each of the pieces in THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS™ 2011 which begins, appropriately, with Gabrielle Bell’s heartfelt Manifestation.
Allison Bechdel began drawing the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1983. Dykes was syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, translated into multiple languages, and collected into a book series with over a quarter of a million copies in print. Bechdel is also the author of the best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, the New York Times, People, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Her new graphic memoir, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2012.
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David Shrigley comes to Quimby's 9/20!
David Shrigley – Live and in person! 9/20 7pm at Quimby’s
and 9/21 at Columbia College
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? The Essential David Shrigley
“David Shrigley is probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever lived.” -Dave Eggers
“With a casual gesture Shrigley points to that hideous shape whose name I’ve never known—and then he names it. And the name is profoundly, embarrassingly familiar. I’m laughing while frantically searching for a pen, so desperate to capture the feeling he has unearthed in me.” -Miranda July
David Shrigley is the rare artist that can comfortably walk the fine line between pop culture and high art. While he’s animated videos for musicians such as Blur and Bonny Prince Billy, his work can also be seen in world renowned museums such as MoMA and the Tate Modern, and his highly distinctive style has been on display in galleries in New York, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, and beyond. He is also clearly a madman.
The aptly named WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING: The Essential David Shrigley [W. W. Norton & Company; October 24th, 2011; $35.00 hardcover] is an outrageous compilation of his illustrations, comics, photography and sculpture. His crude drawings and unexpected compositions are at once childish and clever, and each depiction oddly sincere. They capture the morbid humor of Edward Gorey, the absurdity of a Monty Python sketch, and the peculiar perspective of a Charles Addams cartoon. In short, this beautiful, full color collection is an indispensible introduction to one of contemporary art’s most fascinating and provocative minds.
The pieces in this book are an eclectic and encompassing representation of Shirgley’s interest in the surreal. From a photograph of a hot dog (affixed with googly eyes and tucked comfortably into bed) to childlike drawings of humanity’s most grotesque members (a man drinking a goblet of blood, captioned simply with “CHEERS!”) this book is a both a celebration of condemnation of humanity’s most base urges, fears, and delights.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? is remarkably bold, and Shrigley leaves no topic untouched. Through colorful commentary, he explores everything from clowns to caffeine, sexuality to God, and all the delightfully inappropriate bits in between. You would be hard-pressed to find, in any other work of art, a match to Shrigley’s satirical brilliance. As Will Self points out in the introduction, “Shrigley’s photographic works suggest the refined eye of someone sent back from the future beyond the looming apocalypse, charged with assembling images that, while ostensibly of the mundane, nonetheless explain how it came to pass that humanity destroyed itself.” By turns unsettling, moving, and gut-wrenchingly funny, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? is a revealing glimpse into an offbeat, darkly comedic, and utterly hilarious artistic mind. For more info: davidshrigley.com/
Also, click here for a hilarious animated video abut the book!
Tues, Sept 20th, 7pm here at Quimby’s Bookstore 1854 W. North Ave., Chicago
Wed, Sep 21st , 6:30pm – 9:30pm at Columbia College Chicago – Stage Two 618 S. Michigan Ave., 2nd Floor — Quimby’s will be there to sell books!
These events are co-sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore, Columbia College and AIGA Chicago.
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Cassie J. Sneider Reads From Fine Fine Music with Dave Roche and Danny ‘Ratso’ Rathbun 7/23
FINE FINE MUSIC is a collection of stories about the other side of rock and roll and coming of age in the land that time forgot. Lake Ronkonkoma is stuck in 1981, an alcoholic blackout of unnatually tan people waxing their Camaros to Foreigner on cassette and knowing the words to every Billy Joel song whether you want to or not. From an internship making Seamonkey costumes, a childhood fear of My Buddy dolls, and a heartbreaking crush on Aerosmith, funny lady Cassie J. Sneider delivers her tales of growing up in a land of fist-pumping Snookies with the antagonistic wit of a record store clerk.
Cassie J. Sneider grew up in the murky depths of Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, a town with a haunted lake, a trailer park, and a record store. She put 240,000 miles on a Toyota Echo doing readings all over the country. Cassie J. Sneider collects 8-tracks and new friends. You can catch her on the Sister Spit 2012 national tour. For more info: cassiejsneider.blogspot.com
Dave Roche is the zinester behind such titles as On Subbing and About My Disappearance. He is a Quimby’s favorite.And now, one more name has been added! It’s Danny “Ratso” Rathbun, who writes about openly and honestly about failed relationships, drugs and depression, but always with a wink and a smile. He runs a number of tongue and cheek columns like, ‘Drunken Letters to Abstract Concepts’, ‘Copyrighted Material Used Without Permission’, and ‘Punk rock trading cards’, that have drawn comparisons to Mad Magazine. Ratso’s work has been printed in over twenty different newspapers around Virginia, including The Virginia Gazette, The Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily, and others. He is a regular contributor to Grassroots magazine, and the Commonwealth Times. He publishes the zine Don’t Tread on Me, regularly performs standup comedy and gives readings across the state of Virginia, and is currently on a nationwide tour, doing readings across the country. For more info: dtmzine.blogspot.com
Sat, July 23rd, 7pm
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Heather Augustyn Reads From Ska: An Oral History 7/9
Ska: An Oral History, with a foreword by Cedella Marley, is the story of ska music, told through the words and narratives of those who invented it. In Jamaica, and later in England, this music defined the culture and social conditions of the people. Through the words of their songs, the uplifting rhythm of their vivacious tunes, and the character and skill of each musician, ska music was the foundation for musical forms and the musicians that evolved. Hearing first-hand the stories of these tumultuous times, these creative times, the story of ska music is finally told by those who were there.
Heather Augustyn spent over a decade interviewing ska artists and musicians and researching the music and culture of Jamaica and England. Included in her book are never-before heard words from such greats as The Skatalites’ Doreen Schaeffer, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Brevett, Lloyd Knibb, and Lester Sterling; Derrick Morgan and Patsy (Millicent Todd); Lyn Taitt; Laurel Aitken; Toots Hibbert; Millie Small; Alex Hughes (Judge Dread); The Specials’ Roddy Byers (Roddy Radiation); The Beat’s Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger; The Selecter’s Pauline Black; Lee “Kix” Thompson of Madness; Buster Bloodvessel of Bad Manners; Fishbone’s Dr. Madd Vibe (Angelo Moore); The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ Dicky Barrett; Bucket of The Toasters; Tony Kanal of No Doubt; as well as many others.
Augustyn has been a correspondent for The Times of Northwest Indiana, the state’s second largest newspaper, since 2004. She is also contributing editor for Shore Magazine. She has written for a variety of national publications, such as The Village Voice, In These Times, The Humanist, and World Watch Magazine. She was the last person to interview legendary novelist Kurt Vonnegut before his death in 2007. She lives in Chesterton, Ind. with her husband, Ron, and their two boys.
For more info about Heather Augustyn see skabook.com
Sat, July 9th, 7pm
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Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen and Tara G. Warrior Discuss METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries 7/8
Quimby’s welcomes Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen and Tara G. Warrior as they discuss METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries.
For 25 years, Norway’s Slayer Mag published the gospel of extreme underground metal, combining eye-ripping graphics, brutally honest writing, and relentless offbeat humor. Part anthology, part memoir, and part visual archive, METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries (Bazillion Points Books, 2011) is a weighty 744-page tour through this underworld, and Quimby’s welcomes author Jon Kristiansen from Sarpsborg, Norway, for a discussion with the book’s editor, newly-minted Chicago resident Tara G. Warrior. Kristiansen’s life story has taken him from alienated outsider to central figure in Norwegian black metal to party beast to world-weary survivor. The pair will recount some of the hilarious and the tragic episodes contained in the book, and discuss a dedication to self-publishing spawned from the darkest excesses of metal.
Friday, July 8th, 7pm
Bazillion Points Books has posted a preview video of the upcoming “METALION: The Slayer Mag Diaries” book. The one-minute clip can be viewed at this location:
