Category: Store Events

  • Andrew Choate and Dmitra St. Oops at Quimby’s!

    Join Andrew Choate and Dmitra St. Oops as they read from recent works.

    Andrew Choate grew up in South Carolina listening to free jazz and kraut rock. He moved to Chicago when he was 18 so he could hear concerts by AACM members and there discovered the cultural wealth and ethical abyss that was the twentieth century. He studied language and art at Northwestern, and moved to Los Angeles seven years later to continue his research and community-probing at CalArts. His first book/CD, Langquage Makes Plastic of the Body, was published in 2006 by Palm Press; it is a collection of essays, short stories, poems and songs. Pigs in Blankets, a radio play from 2004, and Spir-ahchoo!-ality, a sneeze-based recording from 2005, have been exhibited in London, Los Angeles, Rome and Yerevan. His writings about music and art have appeared in Urb, Coda, the Wire, Signal to Noise, Art Ltd., d’Art International, Facsimile and the L.A. Times. He has been a guest lecturer at the Museum of Contemporay Art in Los Angeles and until his performance on November 8th, 2008 has not read in Chicago, a place he considers a pivotal spiritual and educational home. His reading at Quimby’s will consist of selections from his book and excerpts from his new project Accounting for Taste: Fictional Food.

    Dmitra St. Oops – grew up in Karkov, Ukraine and moved to Chicago when he was 18 to study mathematics. Stayed in Chicago for 10 years; currently lives in San Francisco. She writes fictional algorithms.

    PLUS!!!!! DRAMBUIE AND KIM CHI WILL BE SERVED

    Check out Dmitra St. Oops on-line

  • Chris Onstad creator of Achewood at Quimby’s!

    The elusive creator of Achewood has finally emerged!  Chris Onstad is shedding his usual shroud of secrecy and hitting the road on a national tour to meet, greet, shake hands, and kiss babies.

    On the heels of the release of The Great Outdoor Fight hardcover and a second straight Ignatz award for Best Online Comic, Onstad is making stops in major cities across North America to celebrate the success of Achewood with the dedicated fans that have made it all possible.

    But these aren’t your typical creator signings.  Tattoos, turkey, drinks, machismo bonding for ladies and dudes, topped off with enough Achewood merchandise for everyday of the week, each stop will be an event in its own right.

    Come and join the party at comic shops across the country with the man who spends his days drawing cats and dogs as you’ve never seen them before.

    Since 2001, cult comic favorite Achewood has built a six-figure international following. Intelligent, hilarious, and adult but not filthy, it’s the strip you’ll wish you’d discovered as an underappreciated fifteen-year-old. Dark Horse presents the hardbound edition of Achewood’s The Great Outdoor Fight, the story of “Three Days, Three Acres, Three Thousand Men.”

  • Henry “Chunklet” Owings at Quimby’s!

    Henry Owings will discuss his history and work with Chunklet in addition to explaining how The Rock Bible was conceived/created/written. He will then open up the floor to a Q&A, followed by a signing.

    The Rock Bible is an insider’s guide to living the rock ‘n’ roll dream. This hilarious rulebook is full of dos and don’ts for musicians, wannabe musicians, and rock fans of all ages.

    Complete with faux-biblical illustrations and parables and essays from comedian Patton Oswalt, drummer Brian Teasley, and professional smartass Andrew Earles, The Rock Bible is a rude and raunchy look at the best and worst of rock ‘n’ roll.

    Henry Owings is the publisher of the widely recognized Chunklet Magazine based in Georgia. He was in Entertainment Weekly’s “It List” for his confrontational “100 Biggest Assholes In Rock” issue and another time has been taken to court by Mad Magazine for his similarly parodied issue. “The Overrated Book”, Henry’s first foray into book publishing, came out a couple years ago. Mostly under the Chunklet moniker, he has been a concert promoter since the late 80’s and has put on over 1,000 shows in his career. Through show promotion and the magazine, Henry went on tour with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross’s Mr. Show comedy tour and has subsequently worked very closely with the Comedians of Comedy tour which has criss-crossed the country for the past four years and has filmed specials on Comedy Central and Netfliz. In addition, he’s produced six comedy releases for Patton Oswalt (Pixar’s Ratatouille) and was instrumental in getting him signed to Sub Pop last spring. Henry has recorded releases for The Oblivians and The Black Lips and has released records on his own label by The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Harvey Milk and Man or Astroman?. Finally, just to keep busy, Henry is also a full-time Grammy-nominated art director who has done graphic design work for such diverse artists as John Cale (Velvet Underground), Captain Beefheart and Charley Patton, and has also done book design for Mr. Show and political cartoonist/ columnist Ted Rall. In his spare time, Henry plays whirlyball and does nothing else except sleep. Henry resides in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Sarah and dogs Bun and Dave. The Rock Bible is his second book.

  • Kevin Coval at Quimby’s!

    Join Kevin Coval as he reads and signs his new book of poetry Everyday People.

    Kevin Coval is the author of everyday people (EM Press, Nov.’08) and slingshots (a hip-hop poetica) (EM Press, Nov. ’05), named Book of the Year-finalist by The American Library Association. Coval’s poems have appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution and The Spoken Word Revolution: Redux (Source Books), Total Chaos (Basic Civitas), I Speak of the City: New York City Poems (Columbia University Press), The Bandana Republic (Soft Skull Press), Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reporter, Cross Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, 2nd Ave Poetry, The Drunken Boat, and many other periodicals and journals. Coval writes for The Huffington Post and can be heard regularly on National Public Radio in Chicago.

    Coval has performed on four continents in seven countries including; The Parliament of the World’s Religions in Capetown, South Africa, The African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, University of the West Indies in Jamaica, St. Xavier’s College in Bombay, India, and four seasons of Russell Simmons’ HBO Def Poetry Jam, for which he also served as artistic consultant. From Jan. 2006 to May 2007, Coval visited 26 states and more than 50 cities during the promotional tour for his first book, performing at over 150 high schools, universities, book stores, theaters, community centers and Union Halls around the country.

    Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, Coval is poet-in-residence at The Jane Addams’ Hull House Museum at The University of Illinois-Chicago and poet-in-residence at The University of Chicago’s Newberger Hillel Center, and teaches at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

  • Kilter release party at Quimby’s!

    Join us for the release of the new Chicago Goth Zine – Kilter.
    Kilter is an off-shoot of GothicArtChicago.com which is an events website and myspace page for the fine arts and music events within the Chicago Dark Art, Fetish, Gothic & Industrial community.
    Featuring reading and performances from:

    Jennifer Anne Buckley: General magazine intro, and overview
    Peter Propaganda: Local Events and Music
    DVNT Dom: Shabari and Bondage discussion and Demonstration
    Nyx: Erotic Poetry reading
    Zoe: a talk about the interviewing process

  • Laurie Lindeen author of Petal Pusher

    Join Laurie Lindeen, author of Petal Pusher for a reading and book signing.

    Laurie Lindeen’s obsession with music was immediate.  But launching a successful career in rock and roll would take more guts and determination than she ever realized she could muster.  Lindeen grew up with The Monkees, The Partridge Family, and singing tunes from Rogers and Hammerstein musicals.  However, when her parents divorced, Lindeen began to understand that life may be a little less sweet than the sugar-coated soundtrack of her youth let on.  If she was to discover that it was a wonderful life after all, it would have to be on her own terms.

    As one of the “lost girls of Generation Why,” Lindeen questioned all the conventions that confronted her.  Why should she bother finishing school on time?  Why should she push for a corporate career that would never make her happy?  Why bother with a serious relationship?  Why were all the moms that she saw so unhappy?  But one thing she never wanted to wonder was, “What if…?”

    Moving from Madison, Wisconsin to Minneapolis, Minnesota, a musical hot-bed of the 1980s, Lindeen packed light, with only the dream of playing music and a steeled will to succeed.  But, before she could play a note, Lindeen came face to face with the disease that silently stalked her every step of the way.  Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease that left her nearly blind in one eye and completely paralyzed on one side of her body,   Lindeen’s passion to make it big on the local, national, and international rock scene became her driving force.

    Forming the all-girl alternative rock band, Zuzu’s Petals, Lindeen and her best girl friends Coleen (“former cheerleader gone off the deep end”) and Phyll (“Annie Oakley meets Patsy Cline”) struggle to survive the many challenges of making it as a female underdog in the male centric rock world including practicing in an abandoned box car, being scammed by slimy music industry agents on under-funded European tours, and watching other, newer female bands selling out and having greater success.

    Ultimately, Laurie’s falling in love with singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg of Replacements fame and her first sense of having a true home since childhood cause her to revaluate her determination to “make it big.” With this new stable foundation in her life, Lindeen is able to truly see the negative aspects of her life in the band for the first time, and she ultimately realizes the difference between her dream and reality.

    About the author:
    Laurie Lindeen holds an M.F.A. in creative writing, a subject she currently teaches. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone’s Anthology Altrarockorama and on NPR. She lives with her husband Paul Westerberg and their son in Minnesota. Visit her online at www.laurielindeen.com

  • Nate Powell Event

    Join Nate Powell as he reads his new book Swallow Me Whole.

    SWALLOW ME WHOLE is a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one’s unraveling. Two adolescent stepsiblings hold together amidst schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, family breakdown, animal telepathy, misguided love, and the tiniest nugget of hope that the heart, that sanity, that order itself will take shape again

  • Porn & Pong with author Damon Brown

    McDonald’s has Fast Food Nation, the fish industry has Cod, but no book has successfully weaved the cautionary tales and humorous history of the world of video games into our modern society… until now. In Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture journalist Damon Brown spent five years exploring how the $20 billion video game industry traces our evolution in sexual mores, technological dependence and personal interaction.

    The VCR and the dawn of the modern porn industry parallels the first Atari systems, Reality TV skyrocketed the same year as The Sims, and the surgically-endowed Pamela Anderson was only outshined by one other woman: Lara Croft. In one of the most stimulating moments, Brown examines Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2005 tirade against Grand Theft Auto, and how politics, hidden agendas and financial pressure affect all controversial art forms. “From TiVo to Google to Match.com, technology is now part of our everyday lives,” Brown says. “Technology is officially sexy now.”

    Fans of pop culture, technology and modern sexual history will be addicted from page one. Author and regular CNN tech correspondent Scott Steinberg calls it “A stimulating look at two of today’s most controversial subjects,” while Playboy Senior Editor Scott Alexander says “…Brown shows the pivotal role erotic content has played in the evolution of this new medium, as well as the furor and controversy it inevitably stirs up.”

    Author Damon Brown covers sex, music and technology, but he is first and foremost a pop culturist. A Northwestern grad, he regularly contributes to Playboy, SPIN, the New York Post, Inc., AARP The Magazine and Family Circle. Damon also writes the Inspector Gadget column for PlanetOut, the largest gay and lesbian website.

    An in-demand tech commentator, Damon has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, G4 and BBC World, and has spoken at several conferences including the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association and Chicago Magazine Writers One-on-One. In 2006 he helped moderate the first annual sex in video games conference in San Francisco. Porn and Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture, is being released by critically-acclaimed indie publisher Feral House.

    Porn & Pong Website

  • French Milk author Lucy Knisley

    Join Chicagoan Lucy Knisley to celebrate the release of  FRENCH MILK. She will present and discuss some of her comic work and also sign copies of her book.

    With the sights and smells of Paris floating off the pages, FRENCH MILK is a witty graphic travelogue that documents six weeks that the 23 year old author and her mother spent living together in Paris. Through drawings, photographs and musings, Lucy takes readers on a journey that begins in Chicago and continues through Parisian sites both on and off the beaten path – from flea markets and comic shops to cemeteries, museums and cafes. A passionate foodie, Lucy’s story is infused with savory illustrations and descriptions of the authentic Parisian food she quickly grew to love… croissants, cornichons, chocolate mousse, and of course, that fabulous French Milk!

    Lucy is a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently attends the prestigious graduate program at The Center for Cartoon Studies and is the winner of The Center’s Diamond in the Rough Scholarship.

  • Trevor Alixopulos and Laura Park Sign Comics at Quimby’s!

    Come celebrate the release of Trevor Alixopulos’ 2008 Ignatz Award nominated graphic novel, The Hot Breath of War by Sparkplug Comic Books, with some of Chicago’s finest emerging cartoonists.   Join Trevor’s friends and fellow 2008 Ignatz Awards nominees Laura Park and Jeremy Onsmith for a signing to celebrate the release the Hot Breath of War.

    The Hot Breath of War explores love amidst conflict and the seduction of violence itself. Trevor lives and draws in Santa Rosa and is also the author of Mine Tonight (also by Sparkplug Comic Books). Old school Quimby’s heads might also remember Quagga?


    Laura Park has done illustrations for The Reader, Asthmatic Kitty Records and many others. Her mini comic Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream is available now.

    Jeremy Onsmith is crazy! We wish he did more minis!!!!

    More info at:
    www.alixopulos.com
    www.flickr.com/photos/featherbed/