Category: Store Events

  • 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

  • Trubble Club Celebrates Free Comic Book Day

    trubbleclub2Like the underground comix artists in 1960’s Berkeley, Trubble Club brings together Chicago’s most talented young comics artists to draw some of the weirdest comics out there today. The group meets every Sunday at a rotating location and draws jam-comics together. One artist draws the first panel of a jam comic, and then passes it to another artist in the group to draw the second panel, who then passes it on to a third artist. This process is continued until the group has a finished comic. Trubble club then self-publishes the finished comics in minicomics.

    Saturday, May 1st is Free Comic Book Day, when comic book stores around the country hand out free promotional comics to customers. Trubble Club will contribute a free comic, which apes PSA comics from the 70’s and 80’s, and will spend the evening drawing at Quimby’s, and prophesizing the future of audience members in comic-book form. Trubble Club contributors at the event will include Aaron Renier, Jeremy Tinder, Grant Reynolds, Russel Gottwaldt, Bernie McGovern, Lucy Knisley, Joe Tallarico, Nate Beaty, and many more. Refreshments for the event will be provided by Metropolitan Brewing, an Andersonville-based brewery whose German-inspired lagers are crafted with toasty malts, spicy hops and a ferocious DIY ethic.

    Though the event starts at 7pm, Free Comic Book Day starts as soon as Quimby’s opens its doors at 11am. Quimby’s will have free comic books while supplies last from a host of artists. Free comics include the Short Pants Observer from Chicago-based small-press publisher, Short Pants Press, and the Xeric Grant winning graphic novel Black Mane by Michael LaRiccia.

    For more info: http://www.trubbleclub.blogspot.com

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  • Melissa Auf der Maur from Smashing Pumpkins and Hole Signs OOOM

    Please note! This event was originally scheduled to start at 6pm. It has been rescheduled for an hour earlier, to start at 5pm.

    Melissa Auf der Maur (MAdM) was a member, songwriter and bass player of Hole from 1994-1999, culminating in the Grammy and Billboard nominated album “Celebrity Skin.” In 2000 she joined the Smashing Pumpkins for their farewell world tour. She has toured and collaborated with bands and members of QOTSA, Marilyn Manson, The Cure, Indochine, NIN, Muse, Ryan Adams, Ric Ocasek and more.

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    “OUT OF OUR MINDS” (OOOM ) is a multi-medium release that includes album, film, comic, and photo collection. It is MAdM’s upcoming album, and it is the key component of her independently produced 21st century concept album – a multi-media experience that beyond the rock album, includes a short film with an original score and a comic book. The film portion premiered at Sundance film festival 2009.

    albumArtThumb
    OOOM ALBUM:     12 track follow-up solo album. Guest Stars: Glenn Danzig, members of NIN, Helmet / Battles and Priestess. OOOM Film: 28min, H-D. Color, Fueled on Solar Power, directed by Tony Stone (“Severed Ways”). Original score to the film by MAdM and the Entrance Band. OOOM COMIC: Illustrated by the young and exceptionally talented Jack Forbes from Brooklyn, NY.

    For more info: http://xmadmx.com/

  • "Work In Progress" Meet-Up

    Join us for our monthly get-together entitled “Work In Progress.” The idea is to provides feedback, community and work space. You can bring whatever you’re working on, whether it’s a zine, a comic, or some other project. We’ll provide the space and time, you provide the help for each other. This monthly event will take shape however it needs to. It will meet on the last Wednesday of every month here at Quimby’s from 7pm-8:30pm.

    Here’s what we’re hoping “Work In Progress” will offer:

    -Feedback. You can bring what you’re working on and get the feedback you need from other like-minded people. Maybe you need this feedback to be in the form of an informal discussion or you need it be in the form of a workshop. Or maybe you need it to be in some other format that will take shape at that moment. Or maybe there’s something else entirely different that you need help with. Perhaps you need to find somebody who can talk to you about finding a a good printer. Or maybe you want to ask other creators how they perform their work once they’ve written it. Who knows what? This is truly a “Work In Progress” that will organically take shape based on the people that attend it. You yourself may be helpful to someone else if you possess the know-how for something they need.

    -Creative networking and community. Yes, this sounds super cheesy, but still. Here’s your chance to meet other people who are in your writing/art/general creative community. Who knows what can happen? Maybe you’ll find some other social misfit like yourself. Maybe you’ll meet a future collaborator or a friend. Maybe you’ll form a collective with some folks you meet. Maybe you’ll publish something with someone you meet. This will be exciting to see who meets who and what alliances are made. We meet so many great people that come through Quimby’s. It’s time for all of you to meet each other.

    -Work space and designated time. Maybe you need to leave your house to get some work done. Maybe you need a designated time and place to force you to actually get some creative work done. Are you one of those people that if you were left to your on devices you’d never get anything done? You’ve got all these good ideas but you never do anything with them. Maybe this is the inspirational kick in the pants you need. Or maybe you just need to be surrounded by other people while you work, because for you, working alone at home is less fun. And unlike working at coffee shops, you won’t feel weird about talking to people you don’t know.

    So maybe you’ve noticed that it’s not quite a workshop, not quite a skillshare, not quite an open house, and yet it can be all three. See you there!

  • Chicago author Josh Wilker reads from Cardboard Gods

    Cardboard Heroes Cvr

    Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child.  While it is rooted in a life obsessed with baseball, Cardboard Gods is much more than just a baseball book; it’s a touching family saga that perfectly captures an era, the late 1970s. Like Nick Hornby or Chuck Klosterman, Wilker finds something very large in the seemingly small.

    Josh expertly shares his classic observations about his central artifacts, the baseball cards, while setting up the poignant tales of his youth.  He uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych; he writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski.  Cardboard Gods is both the perfect book for baseball fans and a great read for anyone compelled by the question, “What if what’s gone can return?”

    “Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods is a poignant and vivid account of how and why he accessed baseball cards as a survival tool while negotiating a 1970s childhood marked by changing mores and confusing mixed messages.  This is a story of brotherly love, survival of the also-ran, and the hope that quickens a kid’s heartbeat each time he rips open a fresh pack of baseball cards, gets a whiff of bubble gum, and, holding his breath, sees who he’s got as opposed to who and what he needs.  If you love the writing of Dave Eggers or Augusten Burroughs, you just may love Josh Wilker’s Cardboard Gods, too.  I did.”
    –Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone and The Hour I First Believed

    “Josh Wilker writes as beautifully about baseball and life as anyone ever has.”
    –Rob Neyer, ESPN

    For more info: http://cardboardgods.net/cardboard-gods-the-book/

  • Librarian Zinesters and Zine Librarians at Quimby’s

    LibrarianZines2010

    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

  • Patrick Wensink and Michael Allen Rose

    SexDungeonForSale

    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

  • Joe Meno Reads From The Great Perhaps

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    Joe Meno     is an accomplished young writer and playwright from Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, he is the author of four novels and two story collections. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s and broadcast on NPR, and he was a longtime contributing editor to Punk Planet magazine. Time Out Chicago recently called him one of their “cultural heroes,” and in a recent feature on Chicago, GQ wrote that Joe is “the closest thing we’ve got to a literary ambassador.” And now, in his latest novel a soft cover version of THE GREAT PERHAPS (W. W. Norton) Meno returns to that Chicago landscape to introduce five characters searching for simple ways to understand the world’s big questions–Professor Jonathan Casper, his wife, two daughters, and father.
    Madeline, Jonathan’s wife, is an animal behaviorist tracking the aggressive behavior of pigeons. The study is compromised, though, by Madeline’s inability to remain an observer; instead she finds herself consistently interceding in her subjects’ cages, trying to save the submissive creatures from the forceful ones. When she’s home from the lab, Madeline feels compelled to watch the news coverage of the ground war in Iraq. This fascination is often counterbalanced by a flood of anxiety that takes over every time she tries to understand the human aggression splashed across the TV screen.
    Jonathan is also a scientist struggling with his work. A paleontologist who has devoted his entire life to finding a giant, prehistoric squid, Jonathan is on the verge of being beaten to the discovery of the elusive creature by the young, talented, and highly respected Dr. Jacques Albert. To Jonathan, this creature is the imperative missing piece that will confirm evolution as the indisputable force propelling animal life, providing the scientific community with the necessary tools to truly understand where humans have come from.
    The stress of these pursuits takes its toll on Jonathan and Madeline’s marriage, and the two find themselves looking into the realms that their subjects inhabit. Jonathan daydreams about the depths in which his muse swims while gazing at maps of the ocean, and Madeline looks to the sky for comfort, company and rejuvenation.

    Also joining the bill is:    Jon Resh, author of Amped, Gretchen Kalwinski, of literago.org fame, Patrick Somerville, author of Trouble (Vintage) and The Cradle (Little, Brown), and folks from Knee-Jerk Magazine.

    For more info: http://www.joemeno.com http://www.gretchenkalwinski.com
    http://patricksomerville.com http://www.kneejerkmag.com

  • J. Bradley Reads From Dodging Traffic

    J. Bradley points to three enduring sources for his inspiration: Jameson, revenge, and his wife, Jelian. Not a likely combination for a poet, but one that has brought forth Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books).  Loud, raucous, lively: J. Bradley’s poetry is widely published and admired, and, in this, his first collection, he brings the full bore of his trademark poetic styling and larger-than-life imagery.  Lust, love, contempt, disgust, parental guidance, and poetic revenge, crafted with unbridled imagination and unmistakable skill. Dodging Traffic hearkens back to the times of childhood, when life was still interesting and imagination could bring cardboard boxes and discarded love affairs to life.

    “J. Bradley is the Veruca Salt of the literary chocolate factory, writing with a satirical brazenness that leaves cavities among the reader’s eyes.  There is a sugary darkness to his work and a lackadaisical charm; that of a black-market dental hygienist.  J. delivers new audacity, important romance, and certainty.  He acknowledges the sensational ugly without apprehension. His ideas are of an entirely different species and his wit knocks at postmodern…stunned today, laughing tomorrow. Dodging Traffic is the classic, the sequel will forever envy.”    -Sarah Morgan, Author of Animal Ballistics

    For more info: http://iheartfailure.net

  • Joyland vs. CellStories: Brian Joseph Davis of Joyland + Dan Sinker

    Brian Joseph Davis of Joyland will be reading from Ronald Reagan, My Father and Dan Sinker of CellStories will present stories from cellphones.
    By the time Brian Joseph Davis stops in Chicago to promote his new collection of short stories, Ronald Reagan, My Father (ECW), over half will have been given away via Chicagoan Dan Sinker’s CellStories project. The two met when Sinker was finding content partners and Joyland.ca, a short story web journal edited in 7 different North American cities and co-founded by Davis, was a perfect match, leading to Davis to experiment with distributing his own stories. Tonight they’ll read and talk about the ins and outs of free fiction.

    Ronald Reagan, My Father
    Ronald Reagan, My Father

    In Ronald Reagan, My Father the elderly take to the streets at night for illegal electric scooter racing. A copy editor suffers brain damage from a virus and is suddenly filled with cannibalistic violence and award-winning minimalist poetry. A Texas doctor transplants the mind of a meth-addicted convict into the body of a suburban web developer, resulting in America’s first “death-penalty case that turned into a custody case that turned into a right-to-die case.” Brian Joseph Davis is an artist and the author of Portable Altamont, a collection that garnered praise from Spin Magazine for its “elegant, wise-ass rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes.” Slate called his first novel,
    I, Tania, “The book of your fever dreams.”

    Dan Sinker is the founder of Punk Planet magazine and is the creator of CellStories, which provides a new short story or essay everyday and has been recently praised in Publisher’s Weekly for its bold approach to networked reading.

    For more info: http://www.joyland.ca , http://brianjosephdavis.com/ , http://www.cellstories.net