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Category: readings
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Kate Zambreno and Friends
Kate Zambreno will read from her debut novella O Fallen Angel, published in April by Chiasmus Press, winner of their “Undoing the Novel” contest. The work is a triptych of modern America set in a banal Midwestern landscape, inspired by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, also a grotesque homage to Mrs. Dalloway. O Fallen Angel commits an act of anarchic literary sacrilege that calls to mind the rant and rage of an American Elfriede Jelinek, an exorcism of the culture wars and pop-cultural debris, a sneering indictment of deaf ears, blind eyes, and mute mouths. An editor at Nightboat Books, Zambreno keeps the literary blog Frances Farmer Is My Sister. An essay collection inspired by the blog will be published by Semiotext(e)’s Active Agents series in Fall 2011.
Like Angela Carter’s fairy tales, Kate Zambreno’s O Fallen Angel deftly exposes the psychic brutality that lies underneath the smooth glassy surface of parable. Set in Midwestern America in approximately 2006, Zambreno’s character/archetypes—a Mommy who names her golden retriever after Scott Peterson’s murdered wife Laci, a daughter who signs her suicide note with a smiley face and a doomed psychotic prophet—are all agents and victims of disinformation, but this doesn’t make their pain any less real. In Zambreno’s SUV-era America, unhappiness doesn’t exist because it can be broken down into treatable diagnostic codes. As she writes, “Maggie wants to be FREE but she also wants to be LOVED and these are polar instincts, which is why she is bipolar, which is a malady of mood.” A brilliant, hilarious debut. -Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia
Also joining the bill is John Beer, Jeremy Davies, Daniel Borzutsky, Megan Milks and AD Jameson.
For more info: http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/
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James Greer reads The Failure at Quimby’s with Zach Dodson and Natalie Edwards
The Failure is a picaresque novel set in Los Angeles about two guys who conceive and badly execute a plan to rob a Korean check-cashing store in order to finance the prototype for an impossibly ridiculous Internet application. The main character, Guy Forget, is a twenty-something drifter with brains, good looks, and absolutely no ambition except to get rich without having to work. His best friend, Billy, is a professional dog walker who ties the dogs to the rear bumper of his run-down car and drives very slowly. Along the way we meet, among others, Guy’s Midwestern parents, his theoretical-physicist brother, his girlfriend Violet McKnight, and his secret nemesis, Sven Transvoort, who hates Guy with unusual passion for reasons that are not immediately clear. Using elements of pop culture, tech jargon, and noirish satire, the book attempts to answer the question not enough people ask themselves on a regular basis: Am I a failure?
JAMES GREER is the author of ARTIFICIAL LIGHT (a selection of Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery Series), which won a California Book Award for Best Debut Novel, and the nonfiction book GUIDED BY VOICES: A BRIEF HISTORY (Grove), a biography about a band for which he once played bass guitar. He is currently working on a rock musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. He lives in Los Angeles.
ZACH DODSON’s hybrid typo/graphic novel, boring boring boring boring boring boring boring, came out last year under the nom de plume Zach Plague. He hosts The Show N’ Tell Show. His writing has appeared in The2ndHand, ACM, Take the Handle, and Proximity Magazine.NATALIE EDWARDS once worked at an Australian indoor theme park, but now writes about art. You can find her fiction in the Chicago Reader, theRumpus.net, Mcsweeney’s Internet Tendency, and on TripleQuick Fiction.
For more information visit www.akashicbooks.com and www.featherproof.com
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Poets Michael Bernstein, Lewis Freedman, and Andy Gricevich
Michael Bernstein is the author of the chapbooks cinderbook (Gold Wake Press, 2009), the rot to light (Gold Wake Press, 2010), 8s (Scantily Clad Press, forthcoming 2010), imaginary grace (Recycled Karma Press, 2010) from “a heap of swords and mirrors” (Bedouin Books, forthcoming 2010), the transit illuminate (mud luscious press, forthcoming 2010), nanostars (greying ghost press, forthcoming 2010), and the Fire District (Differentia Press, forthcoming 2010) . His poems have appeared in magazines such as Puppy Flowers, milk, Moria, BlazeVOX, and New American Writing. He currently co-edits the online literary arts magazine Pinstripe Fedora. Michael lives and writes in Wisconsin.
Lewis Freedman writes poems. He (as of recently) lives in Madison. A chapbook, The Third Word (2009), was published by what to us(press) and another, Catfish Po’ Boys (2009), was published by MinutesBooks. He is co-editor of Agnes Fox Press.
Andy Gricevich lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he edits Cannot Exist magazine and, with Lewis Freedman. His poems have been published here and there, most recently in Pinstripe Fedora and We Are So Happy to Know Something. He has toured internationally as a performer of strange chamber music, theater and satirical cabaret songs with the Prince Myshkins and the Nonsense Company. He is uncomfortable writing this in the third person. Lately he’s been baking bread and finding the prevailing forms of irony in our poetic culture to be utterly inadequate in every possible way. The bread is getting better.
For more info:
www.cannotexist.blogspot.com
www.agnesfox.wordpress.com
www.pinstripefedora.com -
Librarian Zinesters and Zine Librarians at Quimby’s
Four card-catalog-holding librarians will ride into Quimbys on their book carts, zines in hands on April 23rd. These self-professed print culture nerd zinesters will read at what promises to be an entertaining evening stereotype busting. What, you thought all librarians shushed? Well, shush to you.
Zinesters reading include:
Celia Perez, author of the perzine I Dreamed I Was Assertive and mamazine Roots & Wings;
Library school student Jami Thompson of the long-running No Better Voice;
Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout Out and Reading Log publisher Jenna Freedman
Nell Taylor, zine contributor and Executive Director of the Chicago Underground Library
There may even be limited references to Boolean operators. You won’t want to miss this chance to get your library geek on!
For more info: http://zinelibraries.info/2010/03/28/zine-librarians-zine-reading-at-quimbys
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Patrick Wensink and Michael Allen Rose
Yes, there will be (a) Sex Dungeon for Sale! at Quimby’s. The book with that title, that is.
Combine an optimistic realtor selling a home with a sexual playground, a kindergartener convinced he’s actually French, and something called “Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul,” and you get Patrick Wensink’s hilarious collection of short stories titled Sex Dungeon for Sale! (Eraserhead Press). Join Patrick Wensink as he reads from this new book.
Sex Dungeon for Sale! takes these bold characters and a few other outrageous situations to create an unforgettable and quick literary ride. While keeping an eye focused on the surreal, but both feet firmly planted in reality, these stories dissect a modern world so strange you have to laugh. Wensink’s punchy style is perfect for the brevity-obsessed Twitter generation, but saves room in his utility belt of brief tales for humor, humanity and an extra helping of WTF?.
“A deliciously dark and funny book” –Louisville Courier-Journal
“Unputdownable” –The Next Best Book
“Wensink’s evident writerly talents make this an auspicious debut.” –James Greer, author of Artificial Light and The Failure
“Sex Dungeon for Sale! takes facets of everyday American life and twists them until they gag out comedic gold.” -Joey Goebel, author of Torture the Artist and The Anomalies
Also joining the bill is Chicago’s playwright Michael Allen Rose, who will read from his RoShamBo Theatre production Attack Ships on Fire.For more info: http://www.patrickwensink.com
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Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz Reads From Everything is Everything
Everything Is Everything In a recent interior with lit blog Orange Alert, poet Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz describes her latest book, Everything is Everything, as “an odd, tender, spastic, claustrophobic and bizarre-fact-riddled book that is trying to appreciate the journey instead of obsessing about the destination.” But she was also sure to add that “the book also contains a bizarre amount of poems about giraffes who have been trained to rape humans. But only because they really existed, and not because I’m a crazy sadist.”
“Sometimes you plod through the day, bumping into people, tripping over your own feet. But then there are those remarkable days when you move through the world as stealthily as ninja. The latter is how the poems move in this book. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz spits in her hands, grabs the sledgehammer, swings it hard, and rings that bell in poem after poem after poem. Everything is Everything is a winning collection chock full of swift, honest, smart, funny, and even tender poems that go up to 11.” – Jennifer Knox, author of Drunk by Noon
Everything is Everything is Aptowicz’s first poetry collection to be published after her acclaimed non-fiction book, Words In Your Face: Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press, 2008). Cristin will be joined by several poets from the local Chicago Poetry Slam community, as well as her partner – poet and former surly Quimbys employee – Shappy Seasholtz, who will read from his most recent chapbook, This is All I Can Offer You.
For more info: http://www.aptowicz.com -
Oyez Review #37 Launch Reading
Oyez #37 A new year, a new Oyez Review and the best issue yet. The submissions have been through the editorial gauntlet, fire-proofed, crash-tested, and are now ready for readers’ consumption. Contained between these eighty-eight pages are twenty-two inspired pieces of poetry, four ripping short stories, one moving non-fiction narrative, and ten luminous photos on which to fix your gaze.
Oyez Review staffers and visiting authors will read from selected works. Authors for Oyez Review Volume 37, Spring 2010 include Ace Boggess, Brad Buchannan John F. Buckley, Meghan Cadwallader, Lydia Cesarz, Joanne Riley Clarkson, Okla Elliott, Robert Haynes, David James, Susan Johnson, Don Peteroy, Linda Scotto, Susan Slaviero, Joseph A. Soldati, John Surowiecki, Richard G. Sweitzer III, Mark Taksa, Suellen Wedmore, Alexander York, and photography by Prin X. Amorapanth.
Oyez Review is the literary magazine of the Creative Writing Program at Roosevelt University. It is published annually, edited by an all-student staff under the direction of Professor Janet Wondra. Founded in 1965, Oyez Review has featured work from such writers as Charles Bukowski, James McManus, Carla Panciera, Michael Onofrey, Tim Foley, John N. Miller, Gary Fincke, and Barry Silesky, and visual artists Vivian Nunley, C. Taylor, Jennifer Troyer, and Frank Spidale.
For more info: http://legacy.roosevelt.edu/oyezreview/ -
Troy Taylor Presents The Murder & Mayhem in Chicago Series
From the North Side to the South, and from Downtown to the outer edge of the West Side, every Chicago neighborhood has at some point been home to violence, gang influence, and corruption. Local Author Troy Taylor airs all of Chicago’s dirty laundry in this five-part series, chronicling the infamous destruction of the Great Chicago Fire, the most shocking crimes of the 1800s and the rise of the mafia during Prohibition leading to Al Capone’s eventual domination in the Windy City’s underworld. Discover the notorious capers, cons and killings that terrorized a city, and unearth the brutes, bank robbers and burlesque dancers that history could never forget as the Murder & Mayhem in Chicago series exposes the Second City’s darkest sins and dirtiest secrets.
Troy Taylor is the author of more than sixty books on history, crime, mystery and the supernatural in America. He was born and raised in Illinois and currently resides in Chicago.
For more info, go to www.historypress.net
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Jessica Max Stein Celebrates The Rainbow Connection: Richard Hunt, Gay Muppeteer
This event is a reading from Jessica Max Stein’s 84-page zine The Rainbow Connection: Richard Hunt, Gay Muppeteer. It’s a biography of the man behind such beloved characters as Statler, Beaker, Miss Piggy and Janice. Come watch over an hour of Muppet clips and learn about this tragically short-lived, hugely talented queer puppeteer with a wide range of talents.
For more info:
“The Rainbow Connection” on the Muppet Wiki:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Rainbow_Connection:_Richard_Hunt,_Gay_Muppeteer -
Quimby's History Made: A Marriage Proposal!
Saturday, February 21st sure was a memorable evening here at Quimby’s. Living Proof zinester Andrew Mall asked his girlfriend to marry him during his reading! And she said yes! Thanks to Aaron Cynic of Diatribe Media and Billy Da Bunny Roberts of Loop Distro for organizing and hosting a good ol’ fashioned Old School Zine Reading featuring Matt Fagan (Meniscus), ReyRey (Stream of Consciousness) and more!