Category: Store Events

  • Believer Beware!

    So a transgender cowboy, a pornographer/Bible teacher, and a nostalgic former fundamentalist walk into a bookstore. It’s not a joke; it’s what will happen at Quimby’s Saturday, November 14 at 7 pm when Quince Mountain, Erik Hanson and E.J. Park read their contributions to Believer Beware, edited by Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau:“Cowboy for Christ”, “Bible Porn”, and “The Joy of Dissent (Or, Why I Miss Fundamentalism)”, respectively. The second collection from killingthebuddha.com, Believer Beware uncovers “first person dispatches from the margins of faith” and exposes them to the world. As editor Jeff Sharlet describes in his introduction

    “Caught between comics and scripture is the stuff of this collection, memoir. Memoir, after all, is euphemistic label for testimony, a cleaned-up manifestation of the comic book sensibility.”

    Join contributors and killingthebuddha.com editors for this Chicago launch of Believer Beware.

    “Shocking, exhilarating, and never dull…. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal
    “A complex, fascinating collection, full of surprises.” –Booklist
    “Believer Beware is a door that leads from religious indoctrination to freedom. It is a book worth reading, vastly entertaining and (for me anyway) yet another liberating step from exile to better place. —Frank Schaeffer Author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion (Or Atheism)
    For more info: http://killingthebuddha.com/ktblog/believer-beware/

  • Stephen Elliott and Joe Meno

    Don’t miss Stephen Elliott Reading From The Adderall Diaries, with  Joe Meno, author of The Great Perhaps.

    In the spring of 2007, a brilliant computer programmer named Hans Reiser stands accused of murdering his estranged wife, Nina. Despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, he proclaims his innocence. The case takes a twist when Nina’s former lover, and Hans’s former best friend, Sean Sturgeon, confesses to eight unrelated murders that no one has ever heard of.

    At the time of Sturgeon’s confession, Stephen Elliot is paralyzed by writer’s block, in the thrall of Adderall dependency, and despondent over the state of his romantic life. But he is fascinated by Sturgeon, whose path he has often crossed in San Francisco’s underground S&M scene. What kind of person, he wonders, confesses to a murder he likely did not commit? One answer is, perhaps, a man like Elliott’s own father.

    So begins a riveting journey through a neon landscape of false confessions, self-medication, and torturous sex. Set against the backdrop of a nation at war, in the declining years of the Silicon Valley tech boom and the dawn of Paris Hilton’s celebrity, The Adderall Diaries is at once a gripping account of a murder trial and a scorching investigation of the self. Tough, tender, and unflinchingly honest, it is the breakout book by one of the most daring writers of his generation. For more info: www.stephenelliott.com

    Reading with Stephen Elliott is local author Joe Meno.

    “Meno’s distinctively imaginative and compassionate fiction is forged at the intersection of ordinariness and astonishment. In this tragicomic family drama, his fifth novel, [The Great Perhaps], he creates a topsy-turvy household. Jonathan and Madeline Casper, timid and insular, are scientists at the University of Chicago. He is devoted to the elusive giant squid and prone to seizures at the sight of a cloud; she is conducting a bizarrely disastrous lab experiment involving pigeons. Amelia, the older of their two teen daughters, is suspended for writing inflammatory editorials in the school paper, while Thisbe has taken to ardent prayer. With anxiety running high over the Iraq War and the 2004 election, Madeline takes off in pursuit of a strange man-shaped cloud; Jonathan hides in a child’s fort of sheet-draped furniture; their valiant, neglected daughters run amok, and Henry, Jonathan’s ailing father, escapes from the nursing home. As Meno masterfully, and meaningfully, conflates the fantastic with the everyday, he reaches back to Henry’s broken childhood and a stint in a World War II internment camp for German Americans. Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping, Meno’s novel encompasses a subtle yet devastating critique of war; sensitively traces the ripple effect of a dark legacy of nebulousness, guilt, and fear; and evokes both heartache and wonder.” –Booklist

  • Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer Reads From Formal Additive Programs

    This is not another portfolio book by an artist… or at least it’s trying not to be. Formal Additive Programs, Nadine Nakanishi’s first release is an attempt to provide insight into a daily art practice and process, while focusing on the commonalities of figurative and abstract images. Formal Additive Programs offers 18 simple instructions to help the reader expand upon a singular idea, a practice that aids Nakanishi in her art-making everyday.

    This book release party will also feature Dakota Brown and Nick Butcher. Brown, who wrote the poetic preface to the book, will be reading from his work. Butcher (www.nickbutcher.net) is to follow with a musical set, interpreting the 18 steps of instruction that make up the books content. The audience is encouraged to draw along with the instructions and the music.

    Can a set of instructions be so beautifully imbricated as to occlude their own identity as instructions? Can rules for drawing be expressed in a language that eschews the visual, a language more attuned to the patterns of acoustic space and kinesthetics? Nadine Nakanishi’s Formal Additive Programs answers these questions with an enthusiastic, quiet, unpretentious ‘yes’. The title indicates that these are programs for constructing patterns. With these programs, Nakanishi demonstrates how suggestions, rules, axioms, can allow emergent creative processes to thrive. The familiar paradox is that creativity can perhaps best be conceptualized in terms of limits. The particular can find its horizon in the infinite, as long as contingency is allowed to breathe life into the project. Formal Additive Programs builds bit-by-bit, but this is something very different from deductively-arranged building blocks.  These aren’t building blocks at all. To keep things aural: these are more like building tones.— Dave Park, Associate Professor of Communication, Lake Forest College

    Formal Additive Programs
    Format, 7” x 9.75”,
    Cover and Interior, 2-pms colors / Interior, 28 pages
    Hand-printed silk-screen dust jacket – First printing, limited Edition 250

    For more info about the author go to: www.yoneko.net, or www.sonnenzimmer.com

  • Thumbs + Knuckles and The Dreaded Biscuits Zine Launch and Reading

    What do you get when you mix 36 graphic designers, 34 writers, and 3 illustrators? The result is a double Zine featuring emerging writers and designers from Columbia College Chicago. Columbia faculty members Craig Jobson, Patrick Hogan, Jotham Burrello, Rob Duffer, and John Upchurch, the intrepid Production Manager, supervised the production of a 68-pp full color “Zine Columbia — Summer 2009,” aka “The Dreaded Biscuits / Thumbs and Knuckles”.

    The Zine’s on-line presence can be found at:

    http://adweb.colum.edu/~thumbsandknuckles/

    http://adweb.colum.edu/~thedreadedbiscuits/

    Please come celebrate the eighth Zine produced since 2003, and the first one printed offset. Featured readings and merriment will ensue between the book stacks of Quimby’s.

  • Off-site Event: The Interview Show at the Hideout

    The-Interview-Show-No-18-foThe Interview Show, a talk show at The Hideout, is back Friday, Oct. 2, from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Host Mark Bazer welcomes guests Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, co-hosts of “Sound Opinions;” novelist Gillian Flynn (“Dark Places,” “Sharp Objects”) and Joe Winston, director of the documentary “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” $5. Plus, Quimby’s will on hand to sell books by the guests. The Hideout is located at 1354 W. Wabansia.

  • Metralingua’s Down the Block Reading

    Featuring Chicago authors Peter Zelchenko, Hugh Iglarsh, Sharyn Elman, and John Banas

    Chicago authors Peter Zelchenko, Hugh Iglarsh, Sharyn Elman, and John Banas will read their contributions from Metrolingua’s anthology Down the Block.

    As the “Metro” in Metrolingua implies urban life, Down the Block confronts and even celebrates life in the city. The authors’ interaction with cities reveal both complimentary and antagonistic reactions, expressing the complexity of what cities mean to us, whether we live within them or are just passing through.

    Zelchenko is “an outspoken activist who pursues his causes long after most people would have given up” (Chicago Reader), and writes for Gapersblock.com, Thepoint.com, and has a popular column for the Chicago Journal. He also wrote the critically acclaimed exposé, It Happened Four Years Ago: Mayor Daley’s Brutal Conquest of Chicago’s First Ward.

    Iglarsh has published satire, reviews and essays in such periodicals as The Lyric Opera Study Guide, New City, Bridge Magazine, World Jewish Digest, and Context.

    Elman has worked as a broadcaster and producer for television and radio in Los Angeles and Chicago, and now teaches broadcasting at Columbia College.

    Banas has experienced enough layoffs to write about it for this anthology and get involved in politics in DuPage county while pursuing other writing.

    Metrolingua is a micro-publisher created by Margaret Larkin, to celebrate the human movement of writing in the 21st century as an alternative to the publishing monoliths that have emerged in the increasingly consolidated publishing business. See a full preview of the anthology and hear audio at: Metrolingua.com

  • Grazfest Stops at Quimby's

    With Sunny Outside Press, Featuring Nathan Graziano, Micah Ling and Charly “the city mouse” Fasano!

    Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire with his wife and two children. He is the author of Teaching Metaphors (sunnyoutside, 2007), Not So Profound (Green Bean Press, 2004), Frostbite (Green Bean Press, 2002), and seven chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His work has appeared in Rattle, Night Train, Freight Stories, the Coe Review, the Owen Wister Review, and others. His third book of poetry, After the Honeymoon, will be published in fall 2009 by sunnyoutside press.

    Micah Ling is the author of the collection Three Islands, which is forthcoming from sunnyoutside press. She earned her MFA at Indiana University. Her poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Flyway, Fifth Wednesday, and others. Her chapbook, Thoughts on Myself, was published by Finishing Line Press. She teaches writing and literature classes at Indiana University and at Butler University. She also serves as Deputy Editor for Keyhole Magazine. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

    Charly \”the city mouse\” Fasano is a poet and spoken word performer from Chicago. His stories/poems are inspired by his experiences touring with rock and roll bands, failed relationships and being lost in familiar places.  He is the co founder of book publisher and cassette tape label Fast Geek Press / analog empire.  He is determined to present the general public audio recordings and books that document the work of underground poets, musicians, artists and comedians in dead media formats.  His monthly contribution to Lubricated Zine Online called “City Slicker Coconuts” is an examination of life in Chicago.

    For more info:
    nathangraziano.com
    sunnyoutside.com
    myspace.com/charlythecitymousefasano
    http://lubricatedzine.blogspot.com
    fastgeekpress.com
    myspace.com/fastgeekpress

  • John Porcellino reads from Map of My Heart

    Map of My Heart celebrates the twentieth anniversary of John Porcellino’s seminal and influential comics zine, King-Cat Comics, which he began self-publishing in 1989, and which has been his predominant means of expression ever since. In this collection, Porcellino, while living in isolation and experiencing the pain of divorce, crafts a melancholic, tender graphic-ballad of heartbreak and reflection. Known for his sad, quiet honesty, rendered in his signature deceptively minimalist style, Porcellino has a command of graphic storytelling as sophisticated as the medium’s more visually intricate masters. Few other artists are able to so expertly contemplate the sadness, beauty, and wonder of life in so few lines.

    John Porcellino was born in Chicago in 1968, and began drawing and writing at an early age, compiling his work into little hand-made booklets. His acclaimed self-published zine, King-Cat Comics and Stories, begun in 1989, has found a devoted worldwide audience, and is one of the most influential comics series of the past twenty years.

    For more information please visit www.king-cat.net or www.drawnandquarterly.com.

    Also on the bill is musician and poet PATRICK PORTER who will read from his work and perform an acoustic set.

    “Beneath the crude linework and dream-journalism, Porcellino has crafted an affecting scrapbook of a part–time artist’s life. The decade-plus remove from these comics’ initial publication only adds another layer of poignancy, since so many of its concerns are those of a young man, unaccountably adrift in a decade geared towards his generation… A–”
    —THE ONION AV CLUB

    “Porcellino is a master at miniature poignance.” –ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

  • Barred For Life Interviews

    barredforlifePosterGot a Black Flag tattoo? Come to Quimby’s to get interviewed for a book about it! For more info, go here.

  • Ethan Gilsdorf Geeks Out at Quimby's

    Come commune with your inner fantasy fan or gaming geek with Ethan Gilsdorf, author of the travel memoir / pop culture narrative “FANTASY FREAKS AND GAMING GEEKS: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.”

    The book is an exploration and celebration of fantasy and gaming subcultures. On a quest that begins in his own geeky teenage past and ends in our online gaming future, former D&D addict Gilsdorf crisscrosses America, the world, and other worlds—from Boston to Wisconsin, France to New Zealand, and Planet Earth to Middle-earth to the realm of Aggramar. He asks game-players and fantasy fans—old, young, male, female, able-bodied and disabled—what attracts them to fantasy worlds, and for what reasons. What he discovers is funny, poignant, and enlightening.

    Gilsdorf was an obsessive Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) player back in the 1980s. He quit the fantasy role-playing game when he graduated from high school. Decades later, at age 40, Gilsdorf found a box of his old D&D gear in his parents’ basement. The discovery inspired him to write the book. Fantasy and gaming subcultures covered in the book include readers of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books and viewer of the Lord the Rings movies, players of the online game World of WarCraft,  and participants in the medieval reenactment group the Society for Creative Anachronism and fantasy conventions like Dragon*Con. Gilsdorf is also launching a contest from the book’s website, the Great Geek Giveaway, which offers prizes for those who share their geekiest moment. People can submit essays, photos or video during the month of September.

    More info:
    www.fantasyfreaksbook.com

    www.ethangilsdorf.com/greatgeekgiveaway