Quimby’s Bookstore · 1854 W. North Ave · Chicago, IL 60622 · 773-342-0910

Category: readings

  • Keiler Roberts Reads From Chlorine Gardens & Jessica Campbell Reads from XTC69 on 10/5

     

    Quimby’s welcomes Keiler Roberts & Jessica Campbell on Fri, October 5th at 7pm!

    Dealing with pregnancy, child-rearing, art-making, mental illness, and an MS diagnosis, the parts of Chlorine Gardens (Koyama Press) sum sound heavy, but Keiler Roberts’ gift is the deft drollness in which she presents life’s darker moments. She doesn’t whistle past graveyards, but rather finds the punch line in the pitiful.

    “Keiler Roberts is forthright and adroit as she diagrams the pain inherent in memory, but it is Roberts’ idiosyncratic way of buckling you into her brilliant, uncomfortable, funny-as-fuck soul that lifts you above the ground.” — Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters

    In XTC69 Jessica Campbell, the artist, presents the tale Commander Jessica Campbell of the planet L8DZ N1T3 and her crew are searching for men to breed with when they discover the last human on Earth, the cryogenically frozen Jessica Campbell. With a new, but familiar crewmember, the search for men continues, but will it be worth it?

    “This oddball escapade delights from opening salvo to closing quip.” — Publishers Weekly

    KEILER ROBERTS is a Chicago-based artist whose autobiographical comic series Powdered Milk has received an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series and was included in The Best American Comics 2016. Her first book with Koyama Press, Sunburning, was published in 2017.

    JESSICA CAMPBELL is from Victoria, BC and is an enthusiast of jokes, painting and comics. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she is a comics instructor. In 2016, she unleashed the art world and chauvinist skewering: Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists.

    For more info: koyamapress.com

    Friday, October 5, 7pm – Free Event

    Here’s the Facebook invite for this event.

  • Quimby's Welcomes Slackjaw Columnist Jim Knipfel, with Andy Slater 7/19

    Born in Wisconsin, Jim Knipfel was a staff writer at the now-defunct weekly alternative newspaper New York Press for thirteen years, where wrote the long-running and popular “Slackjaw” column, a cynical, misanthropic look at daily life. He is the author of ten books, including Slackjaw, Quitting the Nairobi Trio, These Children Who Come at You With Knives, The Blow-off: A Novel, and, most recently, Residue. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Village Voice, The Believer, OZY, and countless other publications. He’s also blind, and currently lives in the last remaining vestige of true Brooklyn.

    Self-described local blindo, Andy Slater aka Velcro Lewis, will host the event. Slater will be sharing excerpts from his comic How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up, his new stand-up act Permission To Fail, and details of his work with the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists.

    This event is supported by 3Arts, Bodies Of Work, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    “[Slackjaw] is an extraordinary emotional ride, through the lives and times of reader and writer alike, maniacally aglow with a born storyteller’s gifts of observation, an amiably deranged sense of humor, and a heart too bounced around by his history, and ours, not to have earned Mr. Knipfel, at last, an unsentimental clarity that is generous and deep.” –Thomas Pynchon

    “Life hasn’t been easy for Jim Knipfel. He’s blind…He’s got a drinking problem. He’s been in an out of mental hospitals. He’s attempted suicide. But he’s managed to keep his sense of humor.”—Boston Herald

     

     

    Thurs, July 19th, 7pm

    More info:

    Facebook Invite For This Event

    jimknipfel.com

    missioncreep.com/slackjaw

    electronpress.com

    books by Knipfel 

  • Robert K. Elder shares memories from THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE May 10th

    Award-winning author, former rock photographer and journalist Robert K. Elder has composed the perfect walk down music memory lane in THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE: A Do-It-Yourself Music Memoir (Running Press; Trade Paperback Original; ISBN-13: 978-0762464074; 192 Pages/ $14.99).

    THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE is a journal that guides user to write their autobiography through their music collection.

    Sample questions from the book include:
    What song or artist can’t you listen to because of a past romance?
    What songwriter lied to or misled you?
    What song allows you to time travel — that brings back a time and place so strongly that it’s palpable?

    No matter which musical generation you belong to, or whether your musical tastes range from doo-wop to Daft Punk, THE MIXTAPE OF MY LIFE can be instant conversation starter among friends and family.

    Also enjoy work from these fine readers!
    Andrew Huff
    Liz Mason
    Lou Carlozo

    “We all know that music is deeply intertwined with memory. The Mixtape of My Life is an astonishing tool for unlocking your long-forgotten histories.”

    —Jason Bitner, author, Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves

    Elder is the author of seven books, including 2016’s Hidden Hemingway. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, and many other publications. He has worked for Sun-Times Media and Crain Communications, and is the founder of Odd Hours Media.

    For more info, visit: mixtapeofmylife.com

    Thursday, May 10, 7pm – 8pm

    Free Event

    Here’s the Facebook Invite for this event!

     

  • Esther K Smith & Dikko Faust show and tell Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type Borders &c & Purgatory Pie Press 4/19

     

    Rustic Bride Mun! The Most Beautiful Book in the World! Esther K Smith & Dikko Faust of Purgatory Pie Press will show and tell William H. Page’s classic book Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c.: The 1874 Masterpiece of Colorful Typography.

    Esther K Smith first saw The Most Beautiful Book in the World at Chicago’s Newberry Library. As she turned the pages, she knew she needed to work with a big publisher to reprint the book so that she could own a copy. Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type Borders &c (Rizzoli) is a reprint of WH Page’s 1874 catalog of typography and ink from the exuberant early decades of manufactured color–available to the public for the first time. Page produced the largest and most detailed wood type which he distributed his type all over the world– throughout the US, Europe, and Asia–even Burma. One librarian said that though clothing faded and architecture was repainted, the brilliant inks inside the book retained the vivid intensity of the Victorian era. The text is found poetry which one viewer likened to Gertrude Stein. Smith and Faust will show pages from the book and talk about producing the reprint, working with six original copies in three rare book libraries. And they will discuss their own experience at Purgatory Pie Press, one of the longest running artist presses, printing and designing with wood type. Chromatic Wood Type is an opera of a  book–and the opera it inspired (Soundscapes of Color) premiers April 22 at 6018 North. The composer, Michal Dzitko, will be present and they will show a short clip of the opera-in-progress.

    “Take a wild ride through the polychrome world of nineteenth-century poster type. These letters are slathered with more ink and ornament than a tattooed sailor.” –Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

    “WOW. What a treasure to be saved and savored. And what an insane genius craftsman William H. Page was. this book is as fun to read as it is to look at, with its accidental (or perhaps totally intentional) bits of poetry, decades ahead of its time.” —Chip Kidd,  

    Esther K Smith is the author of the best-selling How to Make Books and Making Books with Kids, which Bank St. Education included in their Best Children’s Books of the Year. Smith collaborates with Dikko Faust making limited editions and artist books at Purgatory Pie Press. Their work is in many collections including the Newberry Library, The Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and London’s V&A.

    For more info:

    Images from the book!
    Specimens-cover
    detail 
    wood type
    page
    another page

    esther(at)purgatorypiepress(dot)com

    purgatorypiepress.com

    Facebook Event Invite for this event.

    Thurs April 19, 7pm – Free Event

  • Georgia Webber Reads From Dumb: Living Without a Voice 5/31

    Toronto-based cartoonist Georgia Webber’s new book, Dumb (Fantagraphics Books), Part memoir, part medical cautionary tale, Dumb tells the story of how the book’s author copes with the everyday challenges that come with voicelessness. Webber adroitly uses the comics medium to convey the practical hurdles she faced as well as the fear and dread that accompanied her increasingly lonely journey to regain her life. Her raw cartooning style, occasionally devolving into chaotic scribbles, splotches of ink, and overlapping montages, perfectly captures her frustration and anxiety. But her ordeal ultimately becomes a hopeful story. Throughout, she learns to lean on the support of her close friends, finds self-expression in creating comics, and comes to understand and appreciate how deeply her voice and identity are intertwined.

    “Webber wields the full power of the comics medium to address the life-changing catastrophe of being forced into silence.”

    – Broken Frontier

    Georgia Webber is a cartoonist living in Toronto, where she is a freelance comics in addition to editing the comics section of carte blanche. She is best known for Dumb, her autobiographical comics series about living with a vocal disability.

    For more info:

    Facebook Event invite.

    fantagraphics.com/dumb

    Quimazon

    Media inquiries to: cohen@fantagraphics.com

    Thursday, May 31st 7pm – Free Event

  • Justin O'Brien Reads From Chicago Yippie! '68

    Justin O’Brien’s new book Chicago Yippie! ’68 (Garret Room Books) is a true chronicle of his experiences during the week of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. What promised to be a music festival and protest against the war in Vietnam turned into a “police riot,” as deemed by the official investigation report, Rights in Conflict. This historic event, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has relevant echoes in the protests of today. Even other participants have been amazed by this detailed description of events. O’Brien’s gripping narrative is interwoven with additional eyewitness accounts and includes more than 150 color and black and white photos—most of them never before published, and three original maps help the reader pinpoint the action. Handbills, posters, newspapers, political buttons, and other paraphernalia—all from the author’s collection—provide fascinating visual references and offer graphic evidence of this historic Chicago moment.

    “Justin O’Brien seemingly was ever-present during 1968’s Chicago Convention Week. His lively recollections from the streets and the parks resurrect a polarized time of counterculture protest and potential.”
    —Abe Peck, Professor Emeritus in Service, Northwestern University;
    Author, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press

    “There is no book more loyal to the events that occurred over four August days in Chicago in 1968 than Justin O’Brien’s riveting Chicago Yippie! ’68. With his lucid, engaging prose, O’Brien effortlessly unwinds the various discordant threads that were so tightly woven into the fabric of the anti-war movements that defined the 1960s. Chicago Yippie! ’68 will take you back to a place that time may have muted, but that Mr. O’Brien has never forgotten.”
    —Pat Owens

     

    With more than 400 by-lines on a variety of subjects, Justin O’Brien has written extensively about blues music over a forty-year period, and for several decades has been associated with Living Blues magazine of the University of Mississippi. His work has also appeared in Juke Blues, Sing Out!, UIC Alumni News, Chicago Parent, Digital Chicago, Southern Graphics, and other publications. He has contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Blues (Routledge Press, 2005), Armitage Avenue Transcendentalists (Charles Kerr, 2009), and Base Paths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball (Wm. Brown, 1991), to which, coincidentally, former Senator Eugene McCarthy, the “peace candidate” of 1968, wrote a foreword.

    Friday, March 23, 7 p.m. – Free Event

    For more info: garretroom.com

    Facebook invite for this event here!

     

  • Zizobotchi Rises at Quimby's: Selected Readings from Volume 2 on Friday, March 2nd

    Join us for a night of selected readings from Zizobotchi Papers: volume 2, fall, 2017.

    Zizobotchi Papers is a literary journal dedicated to the novella. Think double feature, with a paperback spine instead of a marquee.

    Jeff Phillips will read from his latest novella, God’s Least Likely to Succeed, about the derailing of a secret agent’s first day on the job by an ancient cult’s infiltration of their operation.

    Erin Makowski will read from Dan MacRae’s latest novella, The Dollmaker’s Grin, where an altercation changes a shuttle bus driver’s life, for better, and for much much worse.

    Copies of the book will be for sale for $13.

    Find out more about Zizobotchi Papers on the web at Zizobotchi.com

    Jeff Phillips is a washed up varsity cross country skier and storefront theatre method actor. For two years he was co-host of The Liquid Burning, an apocalypse themed reading series, and for just shy of three years, he co-hosted the Chicago reading series Pungent Parlour. His short fiction has appeared in Seeding Meat, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Metazen, Chicago Literati, and Literary Orphans. He is the co-founder of Zizobotchi Papers, a literary journal dedicated to the novella and a regular contributor of short stories and essays at the site Drinkers With Writing Problems. You can find him on Twitter as @TheIglooOven or at theotherauthorjeffphillips.com

    Erin Makowski has been acting and singing since her childhood. Her first production was as Gretel in ‘The Sound of Music’. Most of her younger years were spent in the Gilbert and Sullivan Company of El Paso going from the high seas in ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ to a little maid in school in Mikado. After her early schooling in the theater Erin received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College right here in Chicago. Erin has worked with many companies in town, played extras on TV and sung her heart out for Cabaret audiences.

    Fri, March 2nd, 7pm – Free Event

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  • Singer-Songwriter-Guitarist and Author Phil Circle Launches His New Book The Outback Musician's Survival Guide 10/19

    In Phil Circle’s new book The Outback Musician’s Survival Guide (Guilt By Association), he uses his 30+ years as an independent musician to shed some light on the real world of music for 99% of American musicians. Through a series of tales both whimsical and dark, reflections on the craft and the business, and admissions of his own faults, he brings a human face to a seemingly glamorous world. You’re likely to find that some of what you’ve heard about being a musician is sadly or hysterically true, and that other widely held beliefs are little more than hot air.

    “Towards the end of the book, Phil says, “I don’t have some profound message.” In fact, by sharing his humanity and his failings as well as his high points, he has created a profound message. It is often in mere survival that we create greatness, although we ourselves don’t know it at the time. The touch of human grief amidst all of the adrenaline pumping adventure makes this book something of a celebration of what it means to be human.” -Sarah Jane Clarke, Beat Media, Oxford, UK

    Phil Circle has written, recorded and produced eight albums of his own music and two albums of cover songs, one featuring almost entirely music by Chicago songwriters. As a writer, Phil’s work has appeared in articles for various music zines and other publications over the years, including Chicago Music Guide, Pro-Am Guide and a report on the industry for NARAS.

    For more info: www.philcirclemusic.com @philcircle

    Here’s the Facebook invite for this event!

    Thursday, October 19th, 7pm – Free Event

  • Coco Picard presents "Autobiography with Stones" from The Chronicles of Fortune 9/22

    On Friday, September 22nd at 7pm, Coco Picard presents “Autobiography with Stones” a diagrammed artist talk about rocks, foreign encounters, and possible futures. This performative lecture is based on a dream Picard had in which the protagonist of her graphic novel, The Chronicles of Fortune (Radiator Comics, 2017), is hired by the government to psychoanalyze non-human kinds in a post-apocalyptic world. Picard explores the potential of this prospective narrative in relation to famous rocks she has encountered and Dr. Rock, her exhibition at Franklin Gallery where visitors were invited to tell their troubles to a stone. Following the lecture, Picard will sign copies of her graphic novel.

    Originally published as a series of minicomics, The Chronicles of Fortune is a quirky and idiosyncratic adventure of Fortuna, the greatest superhero who could do anything to improve the world (and her alter-ego, Edith-May) but is tragically stricken with ennui, as they learn to cope with loss and recruit a team of friends along the way. At once charming, sad, funny, poignant, and bizarre, The Chronicles of Fortune includes a temperamental stove, a nosy mountain, a goofy crocodile, a loner moth, and a singing goldfish as they lead Fortuna on her greatest adventure.

    Coco Picard is an artist, writer and curator based out of Chicago where she founded The Green Lantern Press and co-founded Sector 2337. Her critical writing appears under the name Caroline Picard in Art21, Artforum, Artslant, and Hyperallergic. Astrophil Press recently published her long-form cat essay, The Strangers Among Us and forthcoming novel, TSK, is due out from Goldwake Press in 2019.  cocopicard.com 

    The Chronicles of Fortune is the first book published by Radiator Comics, a comics distributor run by former Quimby’s employee Neil Brideau, also a founding member of Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE [the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo].  radiatorcomics.com

    Praise for The Chronicles of Fortune

    “In the guise of a fantastical hero comedy, The Chronicles of Fortune is a story about succumbing to and triumphing over loss and grief in all its forms…” – Hyperallergic

    “…each facet of [The Chronicles of Fortune’s] publication illustrates how, when publishers, distributors, and creators are truly invested in a work, the result will be wonderful.”-Women Write About Comics

    “The Chronicles Of Fortune stands as a confirmation of the misfit’s path in life. Not only is it okay to be different, it’s okay to look like a failure in the eyes of others. Who cares? Just you, you’re the only one who needs to care. And are you happy? That seems to be what Picard is asking.” – Comics Beat

    “Edith May/Fortuna’s urban adventures are reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland’s vignettes. With the appearance of Death as the ultimate foe, Picard creates a superhero with emotional resonance and a deeply empathetic story of one woman re-entering the world.” – Chicago Artist Writers

    “You should buy The Chronicles of Fortune, read it, then share it with someone you love.” – Entropy

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  • Poet Carrie McGath Reads From Her New Chapbook, Dollface: Poem-Songs 9/7

    Carrie McGath’s new chapbook, Dollface: Poem-Songs (self-published), is comprised of lyrical strains representing conversations between Surrealist artists, Hans Bellmer and Unica Zürn. After studying the work of these artists and their tumultuous love affair that ended with Zürn jumping out of the window of Bellmer’s Paris apartment, these poem-songs started to come to life for McGath. In addition to the poems that make up Dollface, collage emerged as well as an amalgam of work by Bellmer and Zürn commingled with McGath’s.

    “Dark, playful, and startling, these poems read like a lucid dream hovering at the edge of nightmare; no, not nightmare. Ecstasy. They feel their way around staircases, ribcage muscles, gray smoke, rolling pins – oh, the “hard, cold, beautiful” rolling pin. McGath invites us to the recesses wher  e bodies revise, scatter, retrograde, reify: ‘Touch,’ she writes, ‘Your hearts are hot.’ Indeed, there is much to feel, face, and reface in these irresistible pages.” –Kathleen Blackburn, Essayist and PhD in the UIC Program for Writers

    Carrie McGath’s first collection of poetry, Small Murders (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2006) was followed by several handmade chapbooks including So Sorry to See You Go and Ward Eighty-One. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Chariton Review, Barrow Street, The Hiram Poetry Review, Nude Bruce Review, and others. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is at work on her second full-length poetry collection, The Luck of Anhedonia. She is also an arts contributor to Chicagoist and  resides in Chicago.

    For more info: carriemcgath.com

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    Thurs, Sept 7th, 7pm – Free Event