Category: readings

  • Charles Burns Discusses X'ed Out At Quimby's on 11/3!

    From Charles Burns, the creator of Black Hole, comes X’ED OUT, the first volume of an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction in brilliant color.

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    Doug is having a strange night. A weird buzzing noise on the other side of the wall has woken him up, and there, across the room, next to a huge hole torn out of the bricks, sits his beloved cat, Inky. Who died years ago. But who’s nonetheless slinking out through the hole, beckoning Doug to follow. What’s going on? To say any more would spoil the freaky, Burnsian fun, especially because X’ED OUT, unlike Black Hole, has not been previously serialized, and every unnervingly meticulous panel will be more tantalizing than the last. Drawing inspiration from such diverse influences as Hergé and William Burroughs, Charles Burns has given us a dazzling spectral fever-dream—and a comic-book masterpiece.

    Charles Burns grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman’s Raw magazine in the mid-1980s and took off from there, with an extraordinary range of comics and projects, from Iggy Pop album covers to the latest ad campaign for Altoids. In 1992, he designed the set for Mark Morris’s delightful restaging of The Nutcracker (renamed The Hard Nut) at BAM. He has illustrated covers for Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He was also tapped as the official cover artist for The Believer magazine at its inception in 2003.

    “A haunting first chapter in what promises to be a spellbinder…Masterful…it will leave you begging for the rest of the story.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

    “Like an apocalyptic hallucination…the visionary artistry of Burns exists beyond the bounds of time and constraints of conventional narrative.” –Kirkus starred review

    “Long awaited first chapter in what promises to be a trippy, wildly experimental and typically disquieting epic.” –NPR.org

    “Anything by comics master Burns is a big event and this is no exception.”—Comics Beat

    For more info: www.pantheonbooks.com

  • 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.

  • Van Gogh's Ear volume 7 Release Event

    VGE1.7International prose & poetry anthology series VAN GOGH’S EAR will hold an event to celebrate the launch of its SEVENTH volume. Van Gogh’s Ear is a joint publication of French Connection Press (Paris) and Committee On Poetry (New York), a non-profit organization created by Allen Ginsberg.

    Van Gogh’s Ear is among the most popular of international books in the field of creative writing at the moment and is also an affluent resource for teachers and a library basic. Since its début in 2002, Van Gogh’s Ear has gained international acclaim for its original work by more than eighty celebrated and emerging talents per volume including Yoko Ono, James Dean; Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Charles Manson, Xaviera Hollander, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, Taslima Nasrin, Carolyn and Neal Cassady.

    The event will be hosted by four local Chicago readers and contributors of Van Gogh’s Ear: Marc Smith, Carlos T. Mock, Larry Sawyer, Joel Craig, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, and Larry Sawyer.

    Volume 7 includes work by Jorge Artajo, Camille Feinberg, Fern C.Z. Carr, Saint James Harris Wood, Imani Tolliver, Reginald T. Jackson, Jayanta Mahapatra and many more!

    For more info: www.frenchcx.com

  • Adam Levin Reads The Instructions

    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.

  • Sara Marcus Reads GIRLS TO THE FRONT With Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls Guide to Rocking

    GirlsFrontThe last great underground cultural movement of the pre-Internet age, Riot Grrrl revolutionized girlhood itself. In the early 1990s, young women were realizing that the equality they’d been promised was still elusive, and a newly resurgent right wing was turning feminism into the ultimate dirty word.

    Riot Grrrl roared into the spotlight in 1991: an uncompromising movement of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet. They published zines, founded local groups, and organized national conventions, while fiercely prophetic punk bands such as Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, and Bikini Kill helped spread the word across the US and to Canada, Europe, and beyond.

    GIRLS TO THE FRONT (Harper) is the first-ever history of Riot Grrrl—lyrical and infused with punk, it tells the story of a group of extraordinary young women coming of age and coming into their own. Part social history, part cultural criticism, and part collective biography, this passionate narrative takes us from the front row of a punk show to the stage of the Republican Convention; from a seedy strip club to the US Supreme Court. It tells the tale of a time when America thought feminism was dead, but a generation of noisy girls rose up to prove everybody wrong. Deftly weaving together a wide range of political and cultural histories, this is a dynamic chronicle not just of a movement but of an era.

    Also joining Sara is Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls Guide to Rocking (Workman Books).

    For more info: www.girlstothefront.com

  • Larry-bob Roberts Reads From The International Homosexual Conspiracy

    IntlHomoConsLarry-bob Roberts is into sparking culture, politics, and creating fusions between the two. Since 1989, he has been publishing in print (and now online) the queer culture zine, Holy Titclamps. In The International Homosexual Conspiracy, a series of cultural polemics on an unexpected array of contemporary topics — from mistaken first impressions (“Presumed Hetero Unless Proven Gay”) to sustainable yet unaffordable pants (“Socially Responsible Pants”) to critiques of bourgeois mindsets (“Middle Class Writer”) — author Larry-bob Roberts offers hilarious insights into the absurdities of modern life and queer culture. His humorous observations are destined to jostle readers’ complacency and confirm their worst suspicions.

    Straight people need this book to learn what one of those freaky queers thinks. Mainstream gays need this book to see that there are other ways of expressing homosexuality culturally. Non-mainstream queers need this book to read something that reflects their own points of view. Readers with short attention spans need this book because the chapters are in bite-sized pieces. Fans of satire need this book for a good laugh. Fundamentalist Christians need this book as evidence of the decadence of modern society. In a humorously confrontational way, The International Homosexual Conspiracy is not only raging, but also engaging.

    “Astute, as well as relatively ego-free, Roberts is one of the gay anarchist movement’s clearest
    thinkers.” — Dennis Cooper, author of Closer

    For more info: http://www.holytitclamps.com

  • Richard Thomas Reads From Transubstantiate with Otherworld Authors

    TransubstantiateRichard Thomas’s Transubstantiate constructs a collection of voices that reveals a disturbing futuristic vision of terror and beauty. The novel’s island paradise, its imprisoned inhabitants, and the digital presence that works to control them, merge with ancient forces of rite and belief to create a surreal and devastating collage. This is a work that captures a world we almost know, its realities enough to raise an uneasy sense of potentiality. Richard Thomas was the winner of the ChiZine Publications 2009 “Enter the World of Filaria” contest.  His short story “Maker of Flight” was chosen by Filaria author Brent Hayward and Bram Stoker Award-Winning editor Brett Alexander Savory.  Some of his publishing credits include Cemetery Dance (Shivers VI, early 2010), Living Dead Press (Eternal Night: A Vampire Anthology), 3:AM Magazine, Word Riot, Dogmatika, The Oddville Press, Colored Chalk, Cause & Effect, Gold Dust, Vain, Nefarious Muse, Troubadour 21, Cherry Bleeds and Opium. In his spare time he edits and designs for Colored Chalk and Sideshow Fables and is a workshop moderator at The Cult (chuckpalahniuk.net). He is currently writing his second novel, a neo-noir, transgressive thriller entitled Disintegration.  Richard is also a member of the Horror Writers Association.

    “Transubstantiate is, is — it’s a visual: that 2001 baby opening its eyes in the monolith, but the monolith is shrouded in this story of loss and hope and identity, and encoded in the cadence of that story, if you listen close, is the genetic map with which to draw this impossible celestial infant, opening its eyes on the page, looking right into you.”  Stephen Graham Jones, All the Beautiful Sinners, Demon Theory, The Ones That Got Away

    “Transubstantiate is an intricately-woven dystopian thriller, with every thread pulled tight. This is a solid debut from Richard Thomas.”
    —Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria

    Also joining the bill is Chicago author Laura Griffith, who will read from her book Remember, David Rosenstein all the way from Colorado to read from newly released The Silk Worm, and Nik Korpon from his soon to be released Stay God! (Otherworld Publications).

    For more info: http://www.otherworldpublications.com

  • J.Thomas Tucker reads from The Datemaker Chronicles

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    J. Thomas Tucker hails from Central Iowa. The area is not exactly a melting pot of liberals, but he was drawn into the Woodstock culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Tucker bought into “Hippiedom” and experimented with more than his share of illegal substances. His understanding of this world and the mind of the addict led him to write this story. The Datemaker Chronicles is an embellished true story. Tucker’s journeys across the United States were documented by handwritten notes following the “heroine” Elizabeth Jones (Not her real name) and were transcripted into print over a seven-year period. Tucker’s influences are J.D. Salinger, Cormac McCarthy, The Beatles, and the First Amendment.

    No one ever grows up dreaming of becoming a junkie, yet there are plenty of addicts in the world. Elizabeth Jones is one of them. Liz is one smart cookie; just ask her. She has the world in the palm of her hand, but when her reckless ways put her on a one-way street heading to the darkest back alleys of the ghetto, she won’t return and never attempts to make a comeback. Life on the streets is like that. In her case, it swallowed her whole. Yet, for Elizabeth, it was not always like that. She had been married once. She wore fine clothes and attended exclusive soirees, but four years into a nasty habit of smoking crack changed her style—and her fancy. A gluttonous, insatiable addict, her sexual proclivities allow her to support her drug use by selling her body without much ado. With a daughter in the fray, this unabashedly scandalous and loosely biographical account of drug addiction is truly eye opening. If you are a user or know someone who is, this book paints a realistic picture of what life is like for a strung-out, middle-aged junkie. In it, Tucker examines addiction and the fall of a woman who was a willing accomplice to her own demise and paid dearly to live life in the fast lane.

    For more info: http://www.jthomastucker.com

  • 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

    carlessImagine 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/

    BarsAcrossAmLoResBars Across America: Drinking and Biking From Coast To Coast by John Greenfield

    In 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

  • Chicago AD (After Daley) Group Formed at Quimby's

    William Upski Wimsatt (Bomb the Suburbs, No More Prisons), was here at Quimby’s the other night discussing his new book Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Supermovement. His timing could not have been more appropriate to be back in Chicago. Everyone’s buzzing about the news that Mayor Richard Daley will be retiring, and wondering what happens next. Over 50 people came together here at Quimby’s to start creating a vision for the city’s future. To keep up with/join their continuing conversation, join the new Chicago A. D. (After Daley) Facebook page.

    PleaseDontBomb

    For more info: billywimsatt.wordpress.com