Category: Store Events

  • The Unlympic Spelling Bee at Quimby’s!

    Join us for an evening of vocabulary gymnastics! The Spelling Bee, the ultimate grade-school competition of intellectual prowess and rote memorization, comes to Quimby’s Bookstore for one night only.

    The Official Unlympics Spelling Competition will be held February 7 at 7 p.m. Attendance is free and open to the public, but potential competitors wanting to relive childhood glory days in front of an adoring, live bookstore audience must sign up in advance by replying to the blog entry at: http://tinyurl.com/unlympic-spelling-bee with a full name and email address. The spelling competition will be limited to 50 individuals and competitors will be charged a $5.00 entrance fee.

    About The Unlympics:

    The Unlympics is a month-long sporting event series intended to encourage active dialogue—extremely active dialogue—around the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. The Unlympics looks at highly organized, internationally recognized, massively marketed, thoroughly branded, and extremely expensive sporting events not from a pro or con standpoint, but from a questioning standpoint.

    Quimby’s Bookstore is proud to be the official bookstore and intellectual sponsor of the 2009 Winter Unlympic Games.

    http://tinyurl.com/unlympics-chicago
    http://tinyurl.com/unlympic-events-schedule
    http://tinyurl.com/unlympic-spelling-bee

  • Ice Box Press at Quimby’s!

    Ice Box Press will hold a reading and book signing to celebrate the release of their inaugural chapbook, These Bones, Live! by Ryan Pendell. Joining Ryan Pendall for the reading will be Tara Walker and Erin Messer with a special sneak preview from their up coming chapbooks. Ice Box Press is housed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

    About the Performers:

    Ryan Pendell’s poetry employs lyrical and melodic abandon, combining elements of childhood daydreams and philosophical discourse. Pendell is the founder and co-editor of Lark(!) Magazine (www.larkmag.com).

    Tara G. Walker is a poet fascinated by word games and the visual possibilities of language, currently finishing her MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She works as a teaching artist with Urban Gateways and is the creator of the luckywhale jewelry line, available online at etsy.com.

    E.C. Messer is a California native, like manzanita trees and purple sage.  She was born on a very rainy Sunday.  UCLA made her a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre…and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is almost done making her a Master of Fine Arts in Writing.  She’s pretty sure both schools will either be very pleased or very sorry they did so.  Her parents’ bizarre sense of humor is probably the great gift of her life.  She suspects that you are delicious and would be glad to know you.

  • Lilli Carré at Quimby’s!

    Join Lilli Carré as she signs copies of her new graphic novel The Lagoon. She will also sell prints and various little handmade book items. Refreshments will be served!

    In The Lagoon, a family is seduced by a mysterious creature’s siren song that can be heard emanating from the lagoon after dark, and how each member reacts to the song in The Lagoon is the crux of the story. For the wise — or pixilated — Grandpa, the song reminds him that, in the time he has left, he must pause to respect, appreciate, and fear nature. The song hints at something that Zoey, the daughter, is too young to fully grasp. And the song lures the sexually frustrated mother, and eventually, her husband, into danger… Carré experimented with nib pens and brushes while drawing this black-and-white graphic novel, giving the art a different feel from her previous, Eisner-and-Harvey-Award-nominated story, Tales of Woodsman Pete. The Lagoon was influenced by the films Creature from the Black Lagoon and Night of the Hunter, but reads more like the gothic, family narratives of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers. Rhythms — Grandpa’s taps, the ticking of a metronome — are punctuated by silences that pace this “sound”-driven story. Older teen and adult readers are invited to imagine the enigmatic creature’s haunting, ever-shifting tune as it reverberates through weedy waters, eventually escaping the lagoon to creep into windows at night.

    Lilli Carré was born in 1983 in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Chicago, making animations, illustrations, and comics. Her animated films have shown in various festivals in the US and abroad, including the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and her previous book of comics Tales of Woodsman Pete is a collection of her stories surrounding a hermit who’s slowly losing his wits.

    Visit her at lillicarre.com

  • Jo Dery at Quimby’s!

    Join us for an evening of storytelling! Come see short animations, hear live radio plays, check out zines and books from the Ocean State, lil’ Rhody! Jo Dery will show several short animated films and Walker Mettling will read and perform stories and radio plays from the new audio issue of his zine “The Sparkle.” Get your hands on the recently published book by Jo Dery, titled Quietly Sure – Like the Keeper of a Great Secret (Little Otsu, publisher).

    About the performers:

    Jo Dery lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where she makes drawings, prints and short films. Quietly Sure – Like the Keeper of a Great Secret is her first published book. She self-published little books under the series name Plant Life for Human Lesson, and her drawings have appeared in Paper Rodeo, Lumpen and the SPX Anthology.

    www.jodery.com
    New book from Little Otsu

    Walker Mettling is a Bay Area native who makes zines of collected stories; stories that come to him by postcard, email, and telepathy. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

  • Kramers Ergot at Chicago Comics!!!!!

    Calling all Nerds, Slackers, and Comics Dandies!

    Kramers Ergot will invade Chicago Saturday Dec 13th for a once in a lifetime ink stained event! While I am deeply saddened to report it is not at Quimby’s, I am glad our sister store has the chutzpa to undertake this epic endeavor!

    So don’t sleep, don’t drink, don’t miss it. If I catch you at Quimby’s on Saturday I’ll make fun of you too cause you should really be at this signing!

    ALSO Chicago Comics has limited copies of the new Kramers Ergot coming in for the signing so you better HOLLER at them if you know you want one! Since I don’t work there I’m gonna go off script and tell you this too!!!! I promise you this tour is the first place you can pick up a copy the new Kramers so if you “pre ordered” else where you probably won’t have a copy to get signed! So support your local comic shop and get it there, get it signed by comics legends…just don’t hug them too hard when you do!!!!

    This will be awesome! Be a part of it!

  • THE2NDHAND #30 Release Party

    We convene for the release of the 30th installment of THE2NDHAND’s broadsheet series, marking the magazine’s ninth anniversary and eighth year of hosting Quimby’s events, coincidentally, for which opportunity we are always grateful, if not quite gracious in our gratefulness at all time. Yes, there were pork chops involved, unfortunately, at one time.

    THE2NDHAND No. 30 features the “Gives Birth to Monsters” short by Spencer Dew, a tale of one man’s small heartbreak, the backdrop to a contemporary landscape of well-meaning but ultimately shallow political activism, fractured communicative lines, and more ultimately enduring drives toward total inebriation. In classic Dew fashion, he’ll have you laughing all the way to brink of the void.

    The issue also features excerpts from THE2NDHAND’s David Foster Wallace collaborative mini-tribute by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills and Bellingham, Wash.-based Doug Milam, author of our 27th broadsheet. Chicago editor C.T. Ballentine hosts this release event, featuring Dew, THE2NDHAND contributors Jill Summers and Y.Z. Chin, and Ballentine himself. This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers Event Grant Program by a donation from an anonymous donor.

    The Performers:

    Spencer Dew is the author of the short-story collection Songs of Insurgency (2008) and much else besides — he’s a prolific contributor to many literary venues, including THE2NDHAND’s online magazine, www.the2ndhand.com

    Jill Summers’ audio fiction has been featured internationally by Chicago Public Radio, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, and New Adventures in Sound Art. Her work has appeared in Stop Smiling Magazine, Ninth Letter, VAIN magazine, littleBANG, Gapers Block, Annalemma, and The 2nd Hand, where she’s a somewhat frequent contributor. She is the author of three collections of audio shorts, Cohabitation, Les Petites Tristes, and In The Realm of Normal Sized Things.

    Y.Z. Chin lives and writes in Chicago, is a former editor with Rhino Magazine and studied writing at Northwestern University.

    C.T. Ballentine studied down on Iron St. under the tutelage of Nova Capone, or Eric Graf, as he is sometimes known. His acumen, in so many respects, is world renowned.

  • Off-site Event: Peter H. Fogtdal Reads The Tsar's Dwarf At Chinaski's

    Peter H. Fogtdal‘s book The Tsar’s Dwarf (Hawthorne Books) is about a Danish dwarf given to Peter the Great as a gift who ends up as a court jester at the Russian court. It’s this author’s first book in English, though he’s had twelve published in Danish.

    Here’s more about the book:

    Soerine, a deformed female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great, who is smitten by her freakishness and intellect. Against her will, the Tsar takes Soerine to St. Petersburg, where she becomes a jester in his court. There, she lives a life that both compels and repels her. Soerine eventually gives in to the attentions of Lukas, the Tsar’s favorite dwarf, and carves out an existence for herself amidst the squalor and lice-ridden world of dwarfs in the early 18th century. In this inhospitable milieu, Soerine’s intelligence and detached wit provide her some small measure of protection — until disaster strikes in the shape of a priest who wants to “save” her.

    This event will not be at Quimby’s but down the street at Chinaski’s, and Quimby’s will be there selling the book. Chinaski’s is at 1935 N. Damen, just south of Armitage. Starts at 7:30pm.

  • Kristy Bowen reads In the Bird Museum

    Poet and artist, Kristy Bowen is the author of In the Bird Museum (Dusie Press, 2008) and the Fever Almanac (Ghost Road Press, 2006), as well as the forthcoming Girl Show (Ghost Road, 2009). She lives in Chicago, where she runs dancing girl press & studio, which publishes a chapbook series for women poets, produces the online lit zine wicked alice, and hosts an online shop, dulcet.

    This will be the release event for In the Bird Museum.

    more info at:

    www.kristybowen.net

  • Handmade Nation Event at Quimby’s!

    Join Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl as they discuss their book and forthcoming documentary of the same name: HANDMADE NATION: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design

    Today’s crafters are no longer interested in simply cross-stitching samplers or painting floral scrolls on china. Instead, the contemporary craft movement embraces emerging artists, crafters, and designers working in traditional and nontraditional media. Jenny Hart’s Sublime Stitching has revolutionized the embroidery industry. Each year Nikki McClure sells thousands of her cut-paper wall calendars. Emily Kircher recycles vintage materials into purses. Stephanie Syjuco manufactures clothing under the tag line “Because Sweatshops Suck.” These are just some of the fascinating makers united in the new wave of craft capturing the attention of the nation, the Handmade Nation.

    Faythe Levine traveled 19,000 miles to document what has emerged as a marriage between historical technique, punk culture, and the D.I.Y. ethos. For Handmade Nation (along with the documentary film of the same name, coming in 2009) she and Cortney Heimerl have selected 24 makers and 5 essayists who work within different media and have different methodologies to provide a microcosm of the crafting community. Participants in this community share ideas and encouragement through websites, blogs, boutiques, galleries, and craft fairs. Together they have forged a new economy and lifestyle based on creativity, determination, and networking. Twenty-four artists from Olympia, Washington, to Providence, Rhode Island, and everywhere in between show their work and discuss their lives. Texts by Andrew Wagner of American Craft Magazine, Garth Johnson of Extremecraft.com, Callie Janoff of the Church of Craft, Betsy Greer of Craftivism.com, and Susan Beal, author of Super Crafty, supply a critical view of the tight-knit community where ethics can overlap with creativity and art with community. Handmade Nation features photographs of the makers, their work environment, their process, their work, and discussions of how they got their start and what motivates them. Handmade Nation is a fascinating book for those who are a part of the emerging movement or just interested in sampling its wares.

    website:
    http://www.indiecraftdocumentary.blogspot.com

  • Off-Site Event! Graphic Adaptation Novels: After 9/11 & the Constitution At the Freedom Museum

    Two remarkable graphic novelists, Sid Jacobson and Jonathan Hennessy will be at Chicago’s Freedom Museum to discuss their newest books After 911 and The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation (due out 10/21/08). Listen as these two renowned artists discuss their motivations, creative processes and various obstacles met in developing their newest books. Quimby’s will be there to sell the books!

    What: Graphic Adaptation Novels: After 9/11 & the Constitution

    Where: McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 754, Chicago, Illinois 60611. PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOT AT QUIMBY’S.

    When: Thursday, October 30th, 6–7:30 pm

    Is this free? Yes! (Well what would you expect? It’s at the FREEdom Museum, ha ha ha)