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Category: Local writer/artist
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Canada’s Illegal Ad Vigilante Rami Tabello With Anne Elizabeth Moore at Quimby's 11/12
“We fight illegal advertising using the rule of law,” Rami Tabello says when asked to describe the Toronto organization he founded to fight criminal billboards, Illegal Signs. It’s funded through donations and Tabello’s gambling take—a crazy support system for a group that spends a lot of time scrutinizing city bylaws and calling in complaints to the proper authorities. Tabello’s been called both “a fearless advocate for public space” and “annoying” by Toronto city residents and elected officials. He’ll present his work fighting—and beating—corporate criminals at Quimby’s in Chicago, a city with a massive illegal advertising problem of its own.
Tabello is presented by Chicago author Anne Elizabeth Moore on the occasion of the re-release of the underground hit The Manifesti of Radical Literature (MRL). Out of print for over a year, MRL is an anarchist style guide for cultural producers, with chapters on such foundational political acts as throwing away one’s dictionary, creating one’s own system of punctuation, and refusing to abide by the language imposed upon us by corporate entities. Also, it is funny and of a pleasing form and light heft, perfect for spiriting away in one’s back pocket for an evening of street stenciling or shopdropping. The expanded second edition, features a new Introduction and Afterword and improved jokes. Moore’s Unmarketable received favorable reviews in Forbes, the LA Times, Advertising Age, and the Guardian, and was called “an anti-corporate manifesto with a difference” by Mother Jones and “sharp and valuable muckraking” by Time Out New York.
Come hear about the work of Illegal Signs, pick up a copy of MRL, and meet Tabello and Moore at 7 p.m. on Friday, November 12.
For more info:
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Jay Ryan at Quimby's on 12/10!
Quimby’s is proud to welcome Chicago-based poster artist Jay Ryan, celebrating the release of AN UPDATED AND REVISED GREATEST-HITS COLLECTION of Jay Ryan’s first decade of compelling posters, 100 Posters/134 Squirrels. Known for his hand-drawn type, humorous animal subjects, and muted color selections, Jay Ryan has been making screen-printed concert posters in Chicago since 1995. He’s worked for thousands of rock bands, as well as clients like Patagonia clothing, Converse shoes, Burton Snowboards, and the BBC.The work in 100 Posters/134 Squirrels is framed by essays from luminaries in the music, design, and poster worlds–including Steve Albini, Art Chantry, Greg Kot, and Debra Parr. This 2005 debut collection of Jay’s was praised by Chicago media and publications across the globe, including:
“Not only a gorgeous catalog of the artist’s many memorable posters, but a history of sorts of the Chicago underground rock scene in the last 15 years.” –Chicago Sun-Times
“Jay Ryan takes the germ of an idea and makes it uniquely great. His genius is in knowing what matters and what doesn’t . . . His genius is in having the image matter.” –Steve Albini
Since the release of that book, he has honed his craft continuing without the use of computers, and screen-printing the work in his shop called the Bird Machine for bands such as the Melvins, the Shins, Modest Mouse, Andrew Bird, Shellac, My Morning Jacket, and hundreds of others. His book, Animals and Objects In and Out of Water, features 120 of Jay Ryan’s favorite pieces of art from the last three years, including text about each of the prints, detail photos (shot at the MCA in Chicago), and original drawings.
For more info: thebirdmachine.com
akashicbooks.com/100posters_reissue.htm
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‘Za the Pizza Zine Release and Pizza Party at Quimby’s 11/10
As spicy and sassy as a stick of pepperoni, ‘Za the Pizza Zine is a compilation about, what else, the wonders of pizza. Still, it’s about more than simply reveling in pepperoni prose for creator Nicki Yowell and her baker’s dozen of bi-coastal contributors. The Chicagoans are plenty and include Ramsey Everydaypants of List, Eric Bartholomew of Junk Drawer, gore poet Mason Pierce and Dining with Words’ Caroline Liebman. ‘Za combines fiction, essays, comics, illustration and photography to create an all-out snack time explosion. Come for the reading of eloquent odes to ‘za and stay for the pizza party, featuring actual pizza.For more info: zathepizzazine.wordpress.com
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THE EXQUISITE BOOK Authors and Contributors at Quimby's on 11/5!
EXQUISITE CORPSE [also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse] is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds a composition in sequence…
THE EXQUISITE BOOK
100 Artists Play a Collaborative Game
By Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, and Matt Lamothe
THE EXQUISITE BOOK reinvents the classic surrealist drawing game The Exquisite Corpse for a new artistic generation. In these pages, one-hundred of today’s hottest indie artists each adorn a single page with brand new work, having only seen the page of the artist immediately prior. Each of the book’s ten chapters resides on a ten-page according fold-out that lets you enjoy the artwork in an interconnected stream, as it was originally created by the artists themselves. It includes work from contemporary illustrators, indie artists, and cutting-edge creates such as David Shrigley, Jill Bliss, Jordan Crane and more.
About the Authors: Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, and Matt Lamothe are partners in Also Design, a design firm based out of Chicago and New York that has won several awards, including the ADC Young Guns award. Julia is author of the popular blog BookByItsCover.com, which showcases the design and layout of obscure books.
So far the artists who will be in attendance at this event will be the authors, Anders Nilsen, Lillie Carre, Paul Hornschemeier, Isaac Tobin, Lauren Nassef and Susie Ghahremani.
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Carol Novack, Joseph Suglia, Garrett Cook and Eckhard Gerdes
Eckhard Gerdes’s new 2-in-1 book of novels is “The Unwelcome Guest” plus “Nin and Nan” and is published by Enigmatic Ink (http://enigmaticink.com/) and Carol Novack’s collection of stories “Giraffes in Hiding” is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press (http://carolnovack.blogspot.com/). Garrett Cook is the author of “Jimmy Plush, Bear Detective,” published by Eraserhead Books (see http://jimmyplush.blogspot.com/). For info about Joseph Suglia, see josephsuglia.com.
Eckhard Gerdes is the editor of The Journal of Experimental Fiction, an occasional publication dedicated to the furthering of forefront fiction. He has published criticism in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, American Review of Books, Electronic Book Review, and other magazines. His fiction has appeared in Fiction International, Notre Dame Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, Coe Review, Oyez Review, Rampike, and in many other fine magazines and journals. Gerdes’s previoius novel, My Landlady the Lobotomist, was a top five finisher in the 2009 Preditors and Editors Readers Poll and was nominated for the 2009 Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel of the Year. His The Million-Year Centipede was selected as one of the top ten mainstream novels of 2007 in the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll and was nominated for the 2008 Wonderland Award. He has twice been the recipient of the Richard Pike Bissell Creative Writing Award for excerpts from Przewalski’s Horse, has also been a finalist for both the Starcherone and the Blatt fiction prizes for his unpublished manuscript White Bungalows, and for Cistern Tawdry he was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Fiction Category. He lives near Chicago and has three sons, to whom this new book is proudly dedicated.
Carol Novack is the former recipient of a writer’s award from the Australian government, the author of a poetry chapbook, an erstwhile criminal defense and constitutional lawyer in NYC, and the publisher of Mad Hatters’ Review http://www.madhattersreview.com/. She immigrated to a mountain ridge in Asheville in May, and will be launching her collection of fictions, fusions, and poems, “Giraffes in Hiding: The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack” (Spuyten Duyvil Press), due to emerge this October. Works may or will be found in numerous journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Caketrain, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Literature, LIT, Notre Dame Review, and Otoliths, and in many anthologies, including “The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets,” “Diagram III,” and “The &Now Awards: the Best Innovative Writing.” Writings in translations may or will be found in French, Italian, and Romanian journals. See her blog http://carolnovack.blogspot.com/
Garrett Cook, a 27-year-old author of horror and Bizarro fiction, is the winner of the First Annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown. He has four exciting pulp novellas in print, including the first two books in his infamous and destined-to-be cult classic trilogy Murderland.
Joseph Suglia earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. His other books include Hölderlin and Blanchot on Self-Sacrifice, Years of Rage, and the first edition of Watch Out . What will become of him is anyone s guess. In Suglia’s Watch Out, Jonathan Barrows is a perfect being. He’s arrogant, defines pompous and is arguably the first human to benefit from Body Deity Morphia (confidences that oneself has a Godly physical existence). Knowing JB is like kissing your lover on the lips and tasting your own sexual flavors. Familiar, exotic and taboo.
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Adam Levin Reads The Instructions
Local Chicago writer Adam Levin’s The Instructions (McSweeneys) begins with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ends four days later with the Events of November 17. This is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Ejected from three Jewish day schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies, Gurion ends up in the Cage, a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases of Aptakisic Junior High. Separated from his scholarly followers, Gurion becomes a leader of a very different sort, with righteous aims building to a revolution of troubling intensity.
The Instructions is an absolutely singular work of fiction by an important new talent who has already been compared to David Foster Wallace by New York Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Adam Levin’s stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/ Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clini-cal Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute.
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Active Transportation Experts Jason Rothstein and John Greenfield
Two of Chicago’s experts on “active transportation” adventure come together to discuss the joys of exploring your environment without stinking up the environment. Jason Rothstein and John Greenfield read from their books celebrating car-free travel, Carless in Chicago and Bars Across America.
Carless In Chicago: Survive and Thrive Car-Free In the Windy City by Jason Rothstein
Imagine living in Chicago with more money in your pocket, a smaller bulge around your middle, and less stress about getting from point A to B. Whether you’re an autoholic or a motorphobic, carless by choice or carless by circumstance, a savvy native or adventurous visitor, Carless in Chicago is the indispensable reference and guide to enjoying the city without that money-eating, gas-guzzling, smog-emiting two-ton monkey on your back.“Carless in Chicago is the most comprehensive guide to getting around Chicago I’ve ever seen, covering every aspect of travel. It’s an invaluable resource.” – Andrew Huff, Gapers Block
For more info: http://www.lakeclaremont.com/
Bars Across America: Drinking and Biking From Coast To Coast by John GreenfieldIn Bars Across America, longtime Chicago green transportation advocate John Greenfield tells of his 5,000-mile bicycle journey from Astoria, OR, to Portland, ME, stopping to check out 48 taverns along the way. Part travelogue, part guidebook, part ode to the vanishing community tap, Bars Across America is the story of one man’s two-wheeled trek in search of the perfect pint.
“As John spins his yarn across the U.S. via roads, paths and pubs, you’ll wish at some point you’d gone along.” – Dave “Mr. Bike” Glowacz, author of Urban Bikers’ Tips and Tricks
For more info: http://pintsizepress.info
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CHRIS CONNELLY READS FROM ED ROYAL
Ed Royal is Connelly’s third book and first work of fiction. In this new book, Connelly has written a coming of age story for the criminally insane, a passionate romance for the sociopath-at-heart, set in early 1980’s Edinburgh, through deserted streets and up ancient hills, straddling the silent divide between the polite silence of the middle class and the stark violence of the working class, navigated crudely and clumsily with hallucinogens around enough twists to keep you reading ravenously until the stunning conclusion.
Chris Connelly is the author of the books Confessions of the Highest Bidder and Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible & Fried. He grew up in Edinburgh where he formed his first band THE FINI TRIBE in 1980, before fleeing Thatcher’s Britain for gainful employment as the lead singer for The Revolting Cocks and countless other hedonistic rock bands. He now divides his time between writing fiction, making solo albums, and playing in his band The High Confessions.
For more info: www.ed-royal.com / www.chrisconnelly.com
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Michael O’Flaherty Reads Shiny Shiny
Shiny, Shiny: A Novel by Michael O’Flaherty is a retooled, rocket-fueled Alice In Wonderland for the grandchildren of Marx and Coca-Cola.
In his critical essays on rock and roll for The Baffler, Michael O’Flaherty investigated the complex attempts of human subjectivity and imagination to transcend the political and social constraints of everyday life. Now, in his novel Shiny Shiny, that exploration broadens and deepens into the realm of dreams and possible worlds. The narrative tracks the protagonist, Jane, as her quest for a place to open up and become one takes her from memories of her ‘70s/‘80s girlhood, to exurban family life, to armed communist revolution, only to end in the one destination she never expected….
When put on the spot, O’Flaherty will cite writers like Jane Bowles, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Rhys, and Eduardo Galeano as having influenced his work. But comic books, punk rock, and the wide world of TV (sometimes observed while semi-conscious) have played an equally important role in his writing.
For more info: http://www.goodbaitbooks.com/index.htm
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Local Comics Ladies Nominated For 2010 Ignatz Awards!
2010 Ignatz Award Nominees were announced, and three of them are wonderful local lady artists here in Chicago!
The Ignatz recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. It’s a festival prize that gets awarded at SPX, the Small Press Expo (SPX), in Maryland in mid-September.
The Chicago local ladies nominated for awards are:
Laura Park, nominated for Outstanding Story for her untitled piece in Mome vol 16 (Fantagraphics).
Lilli Carre is nominated for Outstanding Mini-Comic for Don’t Drink From the Sea.
Sarah Becan is nominated for Outstanding Online Comic for I Think You’re Sauceome.
Congratulations, artists!Click here for a full list of 2010 Ignatz Award Nominees.
