Category: Store Events

  • Grant Reynolds Signs Comic Diorama

    Grant Reynolds has been making and self-publishing comics for the better part of his life. By the time you see him at this event he will have turned thirty years old only a few weeks prior. You might wanna wish him a happy birthday (belated) when you see him sitting at the table signing copies of his new book published by Top Shelf entitled Comic Diorama, or even ask how his summer was. If you’re thinking to yourself, “Grant Reynolds, where have I heard that name before?” …well, it might have been from The Skeleton News or Trubble Club, or you may have read one of his books, like Smaller Parts or To the Mouth of the Source…or maybe you both just talked about movies in someone’s kitchen at a party. In any case, if he owes you money, never returned that book he borrowed, or you’ve just got some personal score you’ve been waiting to settle, you’ll know where to find him on October 6th at 7pm.

    “Chicagoan mini-comics mastermind.”  — Al Burian, Burn Collector

    For more info: http://www.myspace.com/grantreynolds

  • Hans Rickheit Presents The Squirrel Machine

    WHAT IS THE SQUIRREL MACHINE? A rodent ensnarement device? A mechanism for concealing one’s guarded harvest? An anachronistic fable for the convulsive elite? A nugatory diversion for the subliterate? The answer to that question can be obtained in the form of an unusual new graphic novel in a book-signing tour ploughing its way through the northeast coast this Autumn.

    THE SQUIRREL MACHINE is the brainchild of HANS RICKHEIT, who will be making appearances to autograph books, make sketches and speak personally to curious readers.

    The Plot: Situated in a fictive 19th Century New England town, two brothers, Edmund and William Torpor confront public scorn when they reveal their musical creations built from strange technologies and scavenged animal carcasses. Driven to seek a concealment for their aberrant activities, they make a startling discovery. Will they divine the mystery of THE SQUIRREL MACHINE?

    This book is a meticulously-rendered creation that defies all known genres. It can best be described as “PROTO-SURREALIST” or “RETRO-FUTURIST” Disregarding labels and buzz-phrases, it is ultimately an immutably strange and haunting narrative that transcends known logics and presumptive dream-barriers. A distillation of subconscious beauty and madness. A dangerous object for the incautious. A revelation for the undernourished crypto-seeker .

    HANS RICKHEIT  was born in 1973 and grew up in New England, lived in the basement of an eccentric art gallery/performance space called the Zeitgeist Gallery from 1997-2002, and currently resides in Philadelphia. Aside from his many self-published efforts, he has appeared in many anthologies, including PAPER RODEO, HOAX and KRAMERS ERGOT.

    “Rickheit is a vastly under-seen talent.” – Tom Spurgeon, THE COMICS REPORTER

    www.squirrelmachine.org, www.thesquirrelmachine.blogspot.com www.chromefetuscomics.com

  • The Week Behind Celebrates 17 Years on the Internet

    On October 7, The Week Behind will celebrate its 17th anniversary as the oldest online magazine in America. Before Slate, before Salon, and almost 10 years before the invention of blogs, The Week Behind was entertaining Chicago audiences with its lively coverage of the arts, culture, politics and technology.

    Join original founders Scott Jacobs, Marilyn Wulff and Bob Brink discuss how The Week Behind evolved from the in-house newsletter of IPA, The Editing House into an Internet sensation (Cool Site of The Day on December 31, 1992.) Meet current contributors and find out how you can write for today’s magazine.

    On hand for this special celebration will be Stump Connolly, chief political correspondent of The Week Behind, reading and signing his recently released book about the 2008 Campaign The Long Slog: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The White House.

    The Long Slog is Connolly’s irreverent account of his 20 months following the presidential campaign. Read his first hand reports from New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio, see how he sneaks into the Republican and Democratic conventions, and join him for Barack Obama’s triumphant Election Night rally in Chicago.

    Rick Kogan calls Stump “as clear-eyed and sharp-eared a reporter as there is in the land.” Tom Geoghagen says he is “a modern day Poor Richard, a witness of uncommon good sense to the nonsense of our presidential elections . . . an American Original.”

    “I don’t think anyone had more fun covering the campaign than Stump, or reading him than me,” adds Bill Kurtis. “You laugh and learn at the same time.”

    For a lively evening of fun, politics and surprise guests, don’t miss The Week Behind Birthday Bash at Quimby’s. The first 20 people in the door are eligible to purchase the last 20 original copies of the 1992 classic “The Week Behind: A Year in the Life of Small Business.”

    For more info: www.theweekbehind.com

  • PUNCHBUGGY BOOK TOUR 2009

    Don’t miss this comics extravaganza, featuring Liz Baillie, MK Reed and Ken Dahl!

    PunchbuggyWeb
    Join acclaimed cartoonists Liz Baillie (My Brain Hurts, Freewheel), MK Reed (Cross Country, Americus) and Ken Dahl (Welcome to the Dahl House, Monsters) as they each celebrate the debut of new graphic novels! All three will be reading selections from their latest works and will be available after the event to sign books, babies, and body parts.

    For more info: www.punchbuggytour.com

  • Jeff Phillips Reads From Whiskey Pike: A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind

    Much as a child draws a picture of a favorite animal, Jeff Phillips has attempted to do something similar with a favorite beverage. It is illustrated in the fashion of a child’s bedtime story book. Only this story book delves into adult themes of corruption and takes us into the land of the source of an intoxicating ingredient, offering a bedtime story not for the dozing child but the soul of a somewhat hardened drinking type. Shane Bowermaster reaps the land and sells his crop of barley to sustain the family pastime and habit; whiskey. Inspired to try his hand at brewing the beverage of choice, a new trade consumes the Bowermaster family, leading them down a path toward one wild and wicked toast.

    “Through the construction of what may be called a bedtime story, Phillips extends a hand to the drunkard and by extension, to the modern reader who looks to fiction to fill up the emotional gaps left barren by historical platitude. So Phillips imbues his text with details from an alternate history, leaping ideas of the type told by a drunken dreamer who truly believes he is awake—“I can drive! I can drive!”—; so he does drive, forward and quick, passing through a national landscape so defined and attentive that the reader instantly recognizes the semi-soft surprise of an erection unexpectedly pushing against the base of a wooden dinner table in full use and spread. However, this same reader cannot identify the story’s setting or time period—1890s? 1970s?—unless hard pressed and squeezed. This is an unusual thing. Let it be known: “Whiskey Pike” is the intoxicating mixture of a young man under many influences.” – James N. Kienitz Wilkins, director of Nature Mature and Public Hearing.

    For more info: http://www.whiskeypike.com

  • Scott Inguito and Sandra Lim Read

    Visiting from San Francisco, poet and artist Scott Inguito will read from two poetry chapbooks along with Sandra Lim, who will read from her first book, Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press).

    Scott Inguito is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His chapbook, Dear Jack, is out from Momotombo Press, and his latest chapbook, The Vernacular Sounds of Dog Noise, a collection of woofs, barks and yelps written in Mexico in January 2008, is something he is working on. His poems have appeared in Shampoo, Fence, and 1913: a journal of forms. His collage-play “Trying to Create Intimacy with a Narcissist” was performed at California College of Art, San Francisco, for Small Press Traffic, in December 2008. Scott lives in San Francisco. His paintings and pictures from his play can be seen at scottinguito.com.

    Sandra Lim was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University, and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals including Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, and ZYZZYVA. Her book of poems, Loveliest Grotesque (2006), won the Kore Press First Book Award. She lives in San Francisco. She is currently the Elma Stuckey Emerging Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College in Chicago.

  • Brett Eugene Ralph and Steve Albini Read

    black sabbatical

    Brett Eugene Ralph, whom Harmony Korine calls “a true beast of a man with insight and beauty to spare” and whose work has been described by Will Oldham as “an excuse for hope . . . sustaining, inspiring, even rescuing” will read at Quimby’s from his book Black Sabbatical. When asked about his influences, Brett Eugene Ralph points to three enduring sources: growing up Southern working class in the 1970s and 80s, playing in punk rock bands, and practicing Tibetan Buddhism. Not a likely combination for a poet, perhaps, but one that has brought forth Black Sabbatical, a debut collection that sings with gutbucket colloquialisms, hallucinatory interludes, and the storytelling tradition of Kentucky. Riled and immediate, the voice that booms from Black Sabbatical is of a seeker tearing the place apart, unafraid to see things for himself, to sing what he has seen, or to say what the long road that led here has cost him.

    “[Brett Eugene Ralph is] a poet as honest and a debut collection as consistently strong as anything else currently out there.”
    -Michael O. Mayberry, Alabama Writers’ Forum

    Southern gothic meets alt-country twang, and rural hardship meets terse postpunk sophistication [as] Ralph’s troubled characters and dissonant outbursts evoke a self-destructive youth: “It’s like somebody choking on a car horn,” one poem ends, “or something metal being born.” Ralph’s rough free verse recalls the deep Ozark surrealism of Frank Stanford and the early poems of Denis Johnson, though neither precursor takes on quite the same blend of upper South present and past.” –Publishers Weekly

    For more info: http://www.sarabandebooks.org

    Also joining the bill is Chicago producer and musician Steve Albini, who will read some short fiction. He’s been writing short fiction for years. Did you know that?

  • teddy merino reads *the city the earth the heart a happening*

    teddy marino (yes, all lowercase, he tells us) got his start as a poet while studying History at UW, Madison, and working at a daycare. He wrote about politics, the apocalypse, and sex. After graduating, he lived a year in Puebla, Mexico, where he taught English, volunteered for a labor rights organization, and lived in a Franciscan orphanage.

    In August of 2007 he moved to his native city of four generations. He found an Americorps job, working at an elementary school on the border of Garfield and Humboldt Park. He continues to work there as a teaching assistant and bicycle program manager. He writes about his (and the schools) neighborhood, about the city, people, and children.

    His first book, *the city the earth the heart a happening* is mostly about Chicago, with a little bit of Puebla, a couple poems from the East Coast, and a handful of love poems.  And this is what he tells us about it:

    “I want to celebrate before suffering the interminable winters of publishing companies whose bodily gases smell too much like roses for me. Broiler Plate: Italian sausage, Polish sausage, matzah balls, beef tacos, fried plantain, collared greens, and a barbecue seitan sandwich.  Broiler Plate: Looking for cultural nourishment of an unsung Chicago poet? Welcome to the party.”

  • SEAN FELIX READS FROM NAMELESS FACES

    Various works meant to warp your world view. Wither its laughing at the bizarre, reaching for the steak knife under the weight of melodic verses, or simply trying to contain a shiver, you will find yourself left slightly askew. Fresh from his stay at the psych ward SEAN FELIX exposes fragments of his mind without requiring the tokens usually necessary for a peepshow of this caliber. Subjects ranging from battles against a twisted god to the murder of a girlfriends mother will leave you wanting to reread the fluid narratives. Little girls with knife fixations, critiques toward the art world, man’s murderous narcissism, and the slow death that encompasses so many relationships are just pieces of a whole. Come hear a verbal menagerie of morbid curiosity, YOU ARE INVITED.

    NAMELESS FACES is a collection of short stories, excerpts, poetry, and rants. Inspired in part by actual events and also by events only taking place inside the authors head, distinguishing the two is a constant challenge. Sean Felix reflects on the abstractly complex as well as the absurdly apparent which binds us all. You will be only spectators awaiting the ambulance to arrive at the scene of the collision.

    SEAN FELIX is a resident of Chicago, is fascinated by pork products, hates electrical engineers, and is plotting to destroy straight leg pants (ladies, your feet look like elephant ears because of them, get a clue). This is the first of his viral distributions.

  • Tyler E. Boudreau Reads From Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine

    Written by Marine Corps veteran Tyler Boudreau, Packing Inferno (Feral House) traces his 12-year career as a Marine, from boot camp in South Carolina to the first siege on Fallujah in 2004.  Boudreau’s transformation from eager recruit, to a professional-minded Marine torn between an intense desire to experience combat and a growing skepticism about the  operations in which he is participating, and finally to a Commanding Officer who lost faith in the mission, is told in deeply personal detail. Boudreau, an Iraq war veteran grappling head on with the psychological trauma left by war, refuses to be silent. His transformation is reflective of the broader American discontent about a war and occupation with no end in sight, and no moral compass left to guide it.

    Packing Inferno digs deep in to the morass of the Iraq war as only a veteran of the conflict can. With rare candor, Boudreau’s account takes readers into the experience of war and all its contradictions. Early in his tour he embraced the call to win “hearts and minds,” politely waving at each Iraqi he met. Yet he confesses that, “most of the Marines, like me, were hungry for blood,” and recounts the unbridled joy he felt after he first saw combat. Eventually Boudreau relates the creeping skepticism that set in at the impossible task of distinguishing civilians from combatants.

    Slowly he comes to believe that American military forces are only creating more insurgents with each attack, and that the war’s inevitable consequence is irreversible turmoil in Iraq and even civil war. Back in the U.S. in 2005, preparing for a second tour in Iraq, Boudreau realizes he loves his Marines more than the mission, and feels professionally obligated to relinquish his command and resign his commission. Boudreau’s final assignment as a Marine is not on the battlefield, but as the OIC of 2d Marine Regiment’s rear echelon, assigned the unenviable task of alerting the families of wounded Marines.  It is during this time, in what he describes as the most difficult job he’s ever done, that Boudreau notices the overwhelming numbers of service members returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress. Boudreau starts to wonder why it is never part of his script to tell a mother or a father that, “Your boy is coming home with a broken heart.” If Boudreau left the Marines in 2005, his battles had only begun. From chronic insomnia to sudden bursts of rage, Packing Inferno takes us inside the mind of a soldier struggling to make peace with the demons of war. Boudreau calls on readers not to avert their eyes from the ugly psychological wounds carried by many veterans and to declare loud and clear, “War did this.”

    Tyler Boudreau, a twelve-year veteran of the Marine Corps infantry, was deployed to Iraq in 2004 as Assistant Operation Officer for an infantry battalion. Following the deployment he was assigned as the Commanding Officer of a rifle company and was preparing to return to Iraq when he resigned his commission because of his growing reservations about the war. He is the founder of Collaborative Revolution, a new not-for-profit humanitarian project to assist Iraqi refugees and immigrants resettled in the US. He maintains a blog at: www.deeperthanwars.blogspot.com