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Category: fiction
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David Moscovich You Are Make Very Important Bathtime Release Event With Eckhard Gerdes 9/13
David Moscovich’s new book, You Are Make Very Important Bathtime (JEF Books Publishing), is about an expatriate in a foreign land and his failure to navigate the awkward seas of extreme culture clash. Set in Southern Japan, it is a celebration of the beauty of misunderstanding and the inadvertent poetry of bad grammar.
“A wild and enlivening collection of stories that capture the comedy, chaos and uncertainty of living as an alien in a place just beyond one’s understanding. Moscovich is a daring writer, and this book, both preposterous and beautiful, is an unusual demonstration of talent.”
-Michael Thomsen, author of Levitate The Primate
David Moscovich writes flash fiction and performs his texts both live and on the radio, fragmenting, ricocheting, and refurnishing language until it meets its own devolution. He lives with chronic insomnia in New York City and runs Louffa Press, a micro-press dedicated to printing innovative fiction.
Also reading: novelist Eckhard Gerdes read from his first published book of poetry, 23 Skidoo! 23 Form-Fitting Poems (Finishing Line Press) and from his short novella The Sylvia Plath Cookbook (published by Sugar Glider Press in Queensland, Australia). Eckhard Gerdes is the author of 14 published novels, including My Landlady the Lobotomist and Hugh Moore. He lives in Geneva, Illinois, and is the publisher of the Journal of Experimental Fiction and JEF Books.
For more info:
egerdes(at)experimentalfiction(dot)com
Friday, September 13, 7pm – Free Event
Light refreshments will be served
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Maureen Foley Reads, with Mark R. Brand and Mason Johnson 9/5
Join the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography as Quimby’s showcases three of MMMarvelous writers at Quimby’s on Thursday, September 5th. Local authors Mark R. Brand and Mason Johnson will be reading from their new books, the respective Long Live Us and Sad Robot Stories; and headlining the evening will be California author Maureen Foley, in town to promote her female relationship dramedy Women Float. All three authors will be available for signing books afterwards. We hope you will be able to join us for this MMMost enjoyable evening!
Maureen Foley is a writer and artist who lives on an avocado ranch by the sea in Southern California with her daughter, stepson and husband, writer James Claffey. Her writing has appeared in Wired, Caesura, The New York Times, Santa Barbara Magazine, Skanky Possum and elsewhere. [maureenfoley.com]
Mason Johnson is a writer from Chicago who currently works full time writing and editing articles for CBS. Also, he pets all the cats. [themasonjohnson.com]
Mark R. Brand is the author of the novels Red Ivy Afternoon (2006), Life After Sleep (2011), and The Damnation of Memory (2011), as well as the editor of the 2009 anthology Thank You, Death Robot. He is a two-time Independent Publisher Book Award winner and is the creator and host of the video podcast series Breakfast With the Author. [vinniethevole.com]
For more info, visit cclapcenter.com or write cclapcenter(at)gmail(dot)com
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Elwin Cotman Reads From Hard Times Blues With Patty Templeton 8/23
In Elwin Cotman’s new book Hard Times Blues (Six Gallery Press), zombies, elves, hobos, Martians, dragons; musical ghosts and sorcerous retail managers wreak havoc. These five lyrical and satirical fables look at the lives of the alienated and dispossessed through a fabulist lens. Drawing inspiration from the Gothic, pulp fiction, rock’n’roll, the Bible, and anime (to name a few), Cotman writes American fairy tales for a 21st century audience. For more info: http://lookmanoagent.blogspot.com/
“Elwin Cotman writes like a brilliant maniac, as if he’s afraid someone will take his pen away too soon.”–Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope
Patty Templeton (below, right) writes hellpunk in a handbasket full of ghosts, freaks and fools. Her work has appeared in Pseudopod, PodCastle, Steam Powered II and Criminal Class Review. She won the first ever Naked Girls Reading Literary Honors Award and has been a runner-up for the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award. For more info: http://pattytempleton.livejournal.com/
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Jay Wexler Reads from The Adventures of Ed Tuttle, Associate Justice, and Other Stories 3/30
A zoo with only black and white animals. A camp where children are forced to gather clams or face a trip to the “hot box.” A Supreme Court Justice’s confirmation hearing presided over by the 1977 Kansas City Royals. The Adventures of Ed Tuttle, Associate Justice, and Other Stories transports the reader to these hilarious places and beyond. This is a world, according to Dan Kennedy, host of The Moth Storytelling Podcast, “where corporate cafeteria lunch servers blurt out Kierkegaard quotes to soften the hard luck of a low supply of the ‘lunch beans’ that two raging alcoholic white collar workers crave daily; a world where an HMO in-network dentist hovers over patients and instead of asking about their flossing habits or aches, asks what it is that they like best about him; a world where television sitcoms are set on death row. That’s nothing—that’s the tip of the iceberg.” These stories, illustrations, and other errata are as funny as they are strange, as wonderful as they are wacky.
“This is funny stuff, and I hope that Jay Wexler will donate his brain to neuroscience so we can see what’s up with it.” –Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate.
JAY WEXLER is a law professor at Boston University and a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His stories, humor pieces, essays, and reviews have appeared in places like Barrelhouse, The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Mental Floss, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Monkeybicycle, Opium, and Spy. His first two books are ‘Holy Hullabaloos’ and ‘The Odd Clauses.’
For more info: jaywex@bu.edu or jaywex.com
Saturday, March 30, 7pm – Free Event
Also by Jay Wexler:
The Odd Clauses Understanding Constitution Through 10 of Its Most Curious Provisions
“For a variety of reasons, many of the Constitution’s more obscure passages never make it to any court and therefore never make headlines or even law school classrooms, which teach from judicial decisions. In this captivating and witty book, Jay Wexler draws on his extensive professional and educational backgrounds in constitutional law to demonstrate how these “odd clauses” have incredible relevance to our lives, our government’s structure, and the integrity of our democracy.”
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Granta’s Best of Young Brazilian Novelists Launches at Quimby’s 11/13
As part of a global event series, Granta is coming to Chicago to launch The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists. Visiting Brazilian authors Cristhiano Aguiar, Miguel del Castillo and current Chicago-local Chico Mattoso will join Granta editor John Freeman to read from and explore their first works translated into English. From the story of a family marked by guerilla resistance to the military dictatorship in Uruguay to the memory of lost love to a man whose ennui drives him to check out of his life by checking into a hotel, these are the bold, cosmopolitan new voices of Brazil. Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists is the English-language edition of the best-selling collection from Granta em portugues, Granta’s Brazilian partner.
‘Here are Jorge Amado’s vibrant offspring; proof that one of the great pleasures of reading is finding the unexpected, the voices we didn’t even know we needed,’ says Freeman.
Chico Mattoso is currently studying screenwriting at Northwestern, is the author of two novels and has worked as a magazine editor and journalist. Writer and essayist Cristhiano Aguiar is a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley and was the editor of two experimental Brazilian literary magazines. Once an architecture student and editor of Noz architecture magazine, Miguel del Castillo is a prize-winning author who also works as an editor at Cosac Naify publishing house.
Tuesday, November 13th, 7pm – Free Event
For more info: granta.com
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33 1/3 Author Michael Fournier Reads Hidden Wheel With Katie Lattari
Michael T. Fournier’s novel Hidden Wheel (Three Rooms Press) uses the author’s twenty years in and around the Boston punk scene as a springboard for an unflinching look at the difficulties of navigating art, commerce and criticism in the Digital Age. In the fictional town of Freedom Springs, bands and artists alike flock to Hidden Wheel, a DIY art/music space owned by a Chicago transplant intent on profiting from the scene. Rhonda Barrett, a onetime chess prodigy turned dominatrix, rails against the coming Singularity –and the commodification of the town’s nascent scene– with her 60-words-a-day diary paintings.He reads with Maine fiction author Katie Lattari, whose Zembla Vist’s American Vaudville embraces postmodern tradition with a fresh, engaging voice.
“Fournier realizes that scenes are forged by the energy of people involved and remembered by the tomes they leave behind, and nails both perspectives. It’s managed to make me excited about albums both real and fake, which is no small achievement.” Sebastien Stirling, Newartillery.com
Michael T. Fournier is the author of “Double Nickels On The Dime,” the 45th installment of Continuum Press’s “33 1/3” series. His writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Boston Phoenix and Pitchfork. Fournier has read with Richard Hell, Maria Raha, Sam McPheeters and Mike Watt.
He plays drums for punk band Dead Trend, who started as a fictional band in the pages of his novel.
For more info: michaeltfournier.tumblr.com
Saturday, 10th November 7pm – Free Event
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Jobie Hughes Celebrates Release of At Dawn
Based on Jobie Hughes’ own life journey, Jobie Hughes’ new novel, At Dawn, presents a raw and gritty coming of age tale that powerfully captures the angst and big questions of today’s generation. Set against the background of the recent American recession, former high school wrestling champion Stratton Brown, escapes a dark past in his small Ohio hometown for a new beginning in the Windy City. Beneath the gruff labor of building a new life, he eventually discovers a way past the ghosts of his past and a new path to the American dream.“Hughes combines coming-of-age tale, portrait of the artist as a young man, and father-son saga in a well-crafted novel…[with] pathos, wit and insight into the relationships that define our lives.” ––Publishers Weekly
Jobie Hughes is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He made national headlines as “Pittacus Lore,” the mysterious co-author of the # 1 New York Times science-fiction bestsellers I Am Number Four (co-written with James Frey) and The Power of Six which have sold over a million copies worldwide. His work has been translated into twenty-six languages and published in forty-eight countries.
For more information on Jobie Hughes, visit jobiehughes.com
Thurs, Oct 25, 7pm
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CCLaP Performs "Podcast Dreadful"
Join the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP) on Friday, September 21st, as it presents a live-audience episode of its new “Podcast Dreadful” serial literary anthology, at the popular Quimby’s Bookstore in Wicker Park. Known for its annual themed compilation of local short work every fall, this year CCLaP is presenting this work as a free 12-part audiobook at its website cclapcenter.com/dreadful, every Monday in September, October and November; featuring a variety of celebrated authors both locally and across the US, each story in this collection has been written in the style of an old Victorian “penny dreadful,” featuring cliffhangers each week and a dark, strange tone throughout. Episode number 4 will be performed in front of a live audience at the famed indie-lit venue Quimby’s, and will feature not only readings from local authors Davis Schneiderman, Jacob Knabb, Jason Fisk and CCLaP owner Jason Pettus, but also real-time radio-style sound effects by a specially assembled stage crew. Free refreshments will also be served that night, and with other CCLaP merchandise available for purchase.
For more info: cclapcenter.com/dreadful or write Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com
Fri, Sept 21st, 7pm
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Brion Poloncic and Eckhard Gerdes Read 8/3
Brion Poloncic’s novel Xanthous Mermaid Mechanics pushes at all of our preconceptions and misconceptions not only about the self, but also about art. Artists are too often and too easily cast as outsiders, and Outsider Art has become somewhat of a commodity with so-called “outsiders” who seem to market their “outsidedness” for monetary gain. One wonders if in some cases the outsider stance isn’t merely a con. But with Poloncic, who has been called the “Daniel Johnston” of literature, we see the real thing, and it is beautiful and scary, marvelous and delightful, yet also angry, insecure, self-doubting. In other words, this is as human as it gets. And sometimes it as humorous as it gets as when, in the depths of his artistic quest, Poloncic begins channeling William S. Burroughs, who dictates a manuscript to him, or when he realizes that all we really need to get through our lives successfully is a sequence of form letters. Although it is deliciously funny, the book is, simply put, both charming and discombobulating, which is a note that rings absolutely true to the ear. Brion Polonic is also an accomplished artist and musician. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his dog Tinca.“This book was a very interesting read. At times, the author goes on a road that I don’t follow, but above and beyond, the first person narrative is brilliant. Dealing with mental illness, drug abuse and some very bad behavior without making excuses or apologies, this book chronicles parts of the author’s psyche that most of us keep locked away. My personal favorite was ‘Schizophrenia 101’. It is a step by step guide for “new” schizophrenics. Though written with humor, one can’t help but wonder if the advice and detailed guide of symptoms and meanings WOULD be a useful tool for people experiencing their first psychotic episode.” –Kyle Muntz, Author of VII (A Novel): The Life, Times, and Tragedy of Sir Edward William Locke the Third: Gentleman.
Also joining the bill is Chicago author Eckhard Gerdes, who will read from his new books The Three Psychedelic Novellas of Eckhard Gerdes (Enigmatic Ink Books) and The Sylvia Plath Cookbook (Sugar Glider Press).
For more info: www.experimentalfiction.com, www.eckhardgerdes.com
Fri, Aug 3rd, 7pm
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Novelist and Musician Dylan Hicks Reads from Boarded Windows and Performs from Companion Album
Dylan Hicks’s debut novel Boarded Windows (May 2012, Coffee House Press), follows a record store clerk in 90s Minneapolis as he searches for his origins and confronts his con-man father figure. A postmodern orphan story that explores the fallibility of memory and the weight of our social and cultural inheritance, Dylan Hicks’s debut novel captures the music and mood of the fading embers of America’s boomer counterculture.Join Dylan for a reading from the book as well as a musical performance of some of the songs from the soundtrack, Dylan Hicks Sings Bolling Greene.
“As a work of American iconography, Boarded Windows is a continually hilarious, hopes-dashed account of an indelible American character: the con man.”
—Greil Marcus
“Boarded Windows is a shrewd and soulful novel.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia
Dylan Hicks is a songwriter, musician, and writer. His work has appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, Star Tribune, City Pages, and Rain Taxi, and he has released three albums under his own name. A fourth, Sings Bolling Greene, is a companion album to Boarded Windows. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Nina Hale, and his son, Jackson.
For more info, visit:
Thursday, May 24th, 7 pm
