Category: Store Events

  • William Ayers Presents To Teach: The Journey, In Comics

    To TeachThis graphic novel brings to life William Ayers’s bestselling memoir To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. These illustrated stories begin with Ayers’s early days teaching kindergarten and follow this renowned educational theorist on his “voyage of discovery and surprise.” Readers meet fellow travelers from schools across the country and watch as students grow across a year and a lifetime.

    On the surface, To Teach is primarily the story of William Ayers and his class as they navigate the kindergarten year from introductions to graduation. In the process, we see how Bill Ayers engages with the children as individuals, translates their questions and concerns into fun and educational projects and handles the “weird” people with clipboards who stop by to check his actions against the Regional and National Curriculum.

    Fans of scholarly graphic works such as Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation and A People’s History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation will appreciate this pioneering work from Ayers and Alexander-Tanner, while fans of graphic novel memoirs will find much to love in To Teach’s powerful and progressive message.

    To Teach: The Journey, In Comics is also a landmark work of collaboration. Ryan Alexander-Tanner lived with William Ayers for over 6 months, at his home in Chicago. This includes the period of time during the 2008 presidential election. The result of a fruitful partnership, To Teach is not just Ayers’ story – the authors also show how other teachers have found ways to engage with, and learn from students. To Teach is a timeless work that challenges the student/teacher dichotomy and opens up a world in which the hard questions aren’t avoided, and it is acceptable for a teacher to say, “Let’s learn this together.

    “This fascinating and, yes, educational book will certainly be of interest to teachers, but it will also teach, inspire, and entertain anyone else who picks it up.” —Publishers Weekly

    “It’s profoundly charming…part autobiography, part education reform tract, and entirely enjoyable to read.” — The Huffington Post

    “A serious book, but laced with humor… a novel approach. Required reading for all educators.” —Harvey Pekar, American Splendor series

    “This book is a treasure chest of insight. It represents what dedicated, imaginative teaching is all about and is a blueprint for everyone who wants to explore the intimate connection between teaching and learning.” —Peter Kuper, Diario De Oaxaca

    For more info: http://store.tcpress.com/080775062X.shtml

  • Artist Sonja Ahlers Presents The Selves, with Anne Elizabeth Moore

    TheSelvesSonja Ahlers has been described as a pioneer of a new genre of print material fusing collage, found images, original drawings, poetry and prose and her work has been included in university teachings. Ahlers was influenced by the early 90s autobiographical comics and zines, the do-it-yourself movement, music of the Pacific Northwest and fine art.

    The Selves (Drawn & Quarterly), her third book, is a 96-page color feminist scrapbook and collective biography, that which Kathleen Hanna said was “seductive, familiar and very funny.” It tells the story of different selves in a lifetime starting from baby to lady. The ‘character’ grows up throughout the pages. The cast includes: Hollie Hobbie, Drew Barrymore, the Olsen twins, Camille Claudel, Alice Munro, Degrassi kids, Angelina Jolie, and Stevie Nicks and Judy Chicago. These selves appear by way of collage, illustration and poetry.

    Sonja Ahlers’ very first book was Temper, Temper (Insomniac Press, 1998) which now sells for $200 online and Fatal Distraction (Insomniac Press, 2004). Born and bred in Victoria, BC, she has been making angora bunnies since 1995. This craft item supports her bookmaking and art practice. She has exhibited her installation work internationally and has received numerous awards.

    Appropriately, this evening filled with childhood nostalgia, pop culture and feminine power would not be complete without staunch critic of consumerism and media activist Anne Elizabeth Moore. Her Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes project was originally a series of eight cards that mimicked the shopping aides found in American Girl Place. Moore is also the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, founding editor of the Best American Comics series, and former editor of now-defunct Punk Planet. Recently, Moore went to Cambodia to teach the first generation of feminists in the country self publishing as a way of combating governmental oppression and self-censorship. She travels throughout the globe to lecture on corporate and governmental oppression and freedom of expression.

    For more info: www.sonjaahlers.blogspot.com or www.sonjaahlers.com or www.anneelizabethmoore.com

  • Dan Clowes Signs Wilson

    WILSON.coverWILSON is one of the most anticipated books of the year to hit stores — by Daniel Clowes, the cartoonist of David Boring, Ghost World and Ice Haven and the legendary Eightball comic book series. Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of one-sided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughter, born after the marriage ended and given up for adoption. Wilson eventually forces all three to reconnect as a family – a doomed mission that will surely, inevitably backfire.

    For more information: www.drawnandquarterly.com/blog

  • Work In Progress Get-Together

    We launched our new monthly working get-togetherhere at Quimby’s, which is called Work In Progress. At the first one, we had some wonderful folks sharing what they’re working on and hangin’ out withus. Comics, zines, poetry and fiction were represented, and we enjoyed snacks. Won’t you join us again on Wednesday, May 26th at 7pm?

    Event!

    Work In Progress is from 7-8:30pm on the last Wednesday of the month.  You can bring your current project and work on it in a social atmosphere.  If you’re looking for critiques or advice, you can get it from fellow attendees.  If you just want somewhere outside of your dark basement apartment to work on that new zine, this is the event you want to go to.

    If you’re looking to meet more folks in the city who are making fun stuff, stop by!  We’re hoping this monthly series will become a positive space for self-publishers and other creative types here in Chicago.

    Spread the word: Work In Progress at Quimby’s, the last Wednesday of every month!

  • Chris Besinger Reads The Usual Beast with Group Icky Rats and ONO

    Don‘t miss this dual release show featuring Chris Besinger, reading from The Usual Beast collected writings (Laughing Mouse Press) performing with Group Icky Rats from their work Group Icky Rats LP (Coat-Tail Records) with ONO.

    Chris Besinger is vocalist for Minneapolis’s STNNNG. In addition to bringing copies of his new book, The Usual Beast (Laughing Mouse Press), a collection of STNNNG lyrics and other writings, with cover art by Tom Stack, Besinger will be performing with Group Icky Rats, his all-improvised rock band that is releasing its LP this month.

    Group Icky Rats –Chris Besinger (STNNNG) on vocals, Jon Skuldt (White) on guitar and keyboard, and Bryan Reynolds on drums—forms, through its headlong charge into constant error, and force of will, new and gorgeous spectacular failure. That’s how it’s supposed to go when you make up all your rock songs on the spot. Wherever this vector directs the music, its components are 1) one poet dedicated, as are the finer ranters in the short history of rock—think Brewer from Saccharine Trust—to both massaging and upending the form through the formal and the informal, the situational, the “poetic” (Besinger); 2) another poet dedicated to –think Metal Machine Music—the piercing and to music-as-irritant (Skuldt); 3) and a shit-hot drummer who will crush you –think being destroyed— with total unadulterated punishing awesomeness (Reynolds). The new Group Icky Rats LP, out in an edition of 100 on Coat-Tail Records (home to releases by The Flying Luttenbachers, Xerobot, Melt-Banana, et al) will be available at the show and contains guitar from Mark Shippy (US Maple, Miracle Condition).

    This event will also feature longtime Chicago way-out unit ONO, recently resurrected in what is now their nearly 30-year career, whose work –verifiable through early 80s releases and numerous performances archived on the internet— keeps re-setting the bar for total mind-bending performative fuckery.
    For more info:

    Group Icky Rats www.myspace.com/groupickyrats
    ONO www.travistravis.com
    Laughing Mouse Press www.laughingmouse.net

  • Cyberpunk Apocalypse’s Elwin Cotman & Daniel McCloksey

    Don’t miss this night of DIY speculative fiction. Fantasy writer Elwin Cotman will read from his debut short story collection, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP. Science fiction Daniel McCloksey will read from his upcoming novel. Both readers are members of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse, a DIY writers’ cooperative in Pittsburgh, PA.

    Elwin Cotman is a writer, performance artist and activist from Pittsburgh, PA. Known for his energetic storytelling, he has featured at the TerPoets open mic, Artomatic, Babble-On and A Space Inside Reading Series. He has performed with musicians Bryan Depuy of “Jubilee” and Joy Toujours. He wrote a full-length story/liner notes for an album by piano-punk band Baby Killer Estelle. “The Jack Daniels Sessions EP” is his first book.

    At the age of 20, Daniel McCloskey graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in fiction writing. At the age of 21, he founded the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers’ Co-op, which combines a writing residency program and a community space in order to support burgeoning writers. He currently resides at the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers’ Co-op where he works to maintain the project, polish his first novel, and does freelance work.

    For more info, see www.cyberpunkapocalypse.com.

  • Kate Zambreno Reads From O Fallen Angel, With Friends

    OFallenAngel

    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 (http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/). 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, AD Jameson and James Pate.

    For more info: http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/

  • Damali Ayo Reads From Obamistan! Land without Racism: Your Guide to the New America

    Obamistan

    Funny, unique and fresh, Obamistan! Land without Racism helps the American public take responsibility for its development, rather than sit at home and hurl disappointment at their televisions, newspapers, and web sites, claiming that President Obama hasn’t lived up to his promises. As the first black president becomes the easy and favorite target for many conservatives and liberals alike. This book uses humor to create a shift in the reader’s perspective. It holds firm the idea that we have work to do as the citizens of our country- amongst ourselves. It shows us that we can make a real difference in support of change by embodying the change ourselves. “Change” is a call to action that does not sit only on the shoulders of our president- but on our capable shoulders too. This book holds the voting public to their word and asks them to put up or shut up.

    “Funny, poignant and consistently absorbing.” Davy Rothbart, Founder of FOUND Magazine and contributor to This American Life.
    For more info: http://welcometoobamistan.com

  • Kate Zambreno and Friends

    OFallenAngel

    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/

  • James Greer reads The Failure at Quimby’s with Zach Dodson and Natalie Edwards

    Failure

    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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