Category: Store Events

The 2ndHand Release Event with
Jeb Gleason Allured, Patrick Sommerville and
Nic PizzolattoSaturday, March 3rd, 8:00 PMFREE
 
The reading is an issue release event for the latest 2ndHand broadsheet, coinciding with an identical event in Atlanta. Featuring readings from:
 
Jeb Gleason-Allured is the Chicago editor of The2ndHand.com.
 
Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, lived in one or two large American cities, and earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He has taught creative writing at both Cornell and Auburn SCF. His first book of short stories, Trouble, came out in September of 2006 (Vintage). He lives in Chicago and is 428 years old.
 
Nic Pizzolatto is the author of the story collection Between Here and the Yellow Sea. Said Booklist: ?Pizzolatto, like the great Richard Ford, is drawn increasingly to sad, even grim scenarios depicting the way people fail to connect. And, also like Ford, he expresses their dissatisfaction in precise language, drawing readers into perfectly realized, frequently unconventional scenarios?These sad, beautifully rendered stories will resonate with fans of the form.?

Oyez Review Issue 34 EventSaturday Feb 24th 8PMWith Jotham Burrello and J.
Weintraub, plus two other contributors to the new issue.

John Sheppard and Evan ManderyWednesday, February 21st, 7:00 PM
 
SMALL TOWN PUNK by John SheppardTrapped in dreary Sarasota, Florida in the early 1980s–during Reagan’s “Morning in America,”–going to high school with junior fascists by day, working at Pizza Hut by night, his family a dysfunctional nightmare, 17-year old Buzz Pepper feels that nothing matters in life beyond drinking, drugs and punk rock.
 
As the country around him is becoming more conservative and corporate, and adulthood seems like the ultimate corrupt existence, Buzz can only find solace within a close-knit group of fellow disillusioned teens, which includes his devoted younger sister, Sissy. As they drive around in Buzz’s beat-up van, encountering redneck cops, mocking the local “geezers,” and wondering if there is any meaning in what seems to be a meaningless world, Small Town Punk perfectly captures how it is to be young, yet feel that you have no future.
 
John Sheppard currently lives in Chicago, and his fiction has been published in Bridge Magazine.
 
DREAMING OF GWEN STEFANI by Evan Mandery.Mortimer Taylor Coleridge is a unique man. With a mind of rare mathematical precision, he is obsessed with imposing order upon the chaos of every day life. A once brilliant student of evolutionary biology at Columbia University, he has turned his back on a promising academic career to devote his life to selling hot dogs at Papaya Queen. And Mortimer has used his keen intellect to become the quickest and most efficient of hot dog men, devising a numerical-based system to sell hot dogs which maximizes both time and effort.
 
One day while watching TV, Mortimer comes upon VH1, and his life is instantly transformed. While watching Behind the Music: No Doubt, he decides that he and Gwen Stefani are soul mates, destined to be together. When Mortimer discovers that her favorite food is a Papaya Queen hot dog, he dedicates his life to preparing for the day, which he knows will come, when Gwen Stefani will walk into the Papaya Queen where he works, order a frankfurter and fall in love with him.
 
Evan Mandery is the author of two works of nonfiction. Dreaming of Gwen Stefani is his first novel. He lives in New York City.
 
Both Authors will be present to read and sign their new books.

M. Dylan Raskin reads fromBandanas and October SuppliesFriday, February 16th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
In Bandanas and October Supplies, M. Dylan Raskin (MDR to friends) is back with the most unexpected of books?an offbeat love song to his ailing mother?that reads like a punk-rock version of The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Of course, there\’s a twist.
 
As always, young Mr. Raskin has a lot on his mind. His generation is still stocked to the gills with morons and \”walking clich?s,\” and MDR?s favorite things?blanket forts, fleece pants, cozy trees, and the month of October, to name just a few?are still in woefully short supply. But when his mother is diagnosed with cancer, MDR?s usual troubles are forced to the backseat. Together, mother and son hit the road in their little Honda del Sol and scour America for peace and quiet and the \”October supplies\” they need to keep going.
 
Equal parts road story, elegy, and hallucinatory bildungsroman, Bandanas and October Supplies is a bittersweet love story that is like no other book ever written about death, life, and the complex devotion between a mother and a son.
 
M. Dylan Raskin will read and sign his new book at this event

Michael McColly reads from The After Death RoomThursday, February 15th, 7:00 PM
 
Michael McColly begins his new memoir The After-Death Room in South Africa, where he traveled in 2000 to teach yoga to those in attendance at the International AIDS conference. But instead of teaching, McColly becomes the student to the scores of AIDS activists he meets in Africa who challenge him to take his spiritual beliefs off the mat and out into the harsh but life-affirming world of AIDS activism.
 
Part spiritual memoir, part investigative journalism, McColly?s riveting account of life inside the AIDS pandemic is one of the first ever written by an HIV+ writer. From Africa to Asia to neighborhoods in his own home of Chicago, McColly takes readers into struggling lives of Asian commercial sex workers, African-American prisoners, and Vietnamese street children as well as the spirited activism of Zulu traditional healers, Islamic mullahs of Senegal, African-American pastors, and Buddhists monks working with the dying in Thailand.
 
William Finnegan of the New Yorker and author of Cold New World calls The After-Death Room ?a revelation, an epic 21st century canvas on which the themes of courage, ingenuity, solidarity, and justice stand out just as boldly as those of cruel indifference and despair. . . McColly brings the global AIDS story home to Americans in a way no other writer has done.?
 
Michael McColly is the author of The World Is Round, a collection of immigrant narratives on coming to America. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, In These Times, The Sun, Ascent, and Salon.com. He?s a recipient of fellowship awards to MacDowell, Yaddo, Blue Mountain and Ragdale. He lives in Chicago where he teaches yoga and creative writing at Columbia College and Northwestern University.
 
Michael McColly will be joined by Lex Sonne and Jessica Tierney whom will read from original fiction at this event.
 

Jordan Tate reads from The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual EuphemismsFridayday, Feburary 9th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Do terms such as camel toe and money shot make you laugh? How about phrases like bury the bone or choking the chicken? Photographer and writer Jordan Tate uses his penchant for taking pictures to illustrate the aforementioned catchphrases and more in a hilarious new compilation, The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms (St. Martin?s)
 
Along with both literal and sexual definitions of each euphemism, this unique dictionary also has photographs shot by Tate himself and, of course, an example of each term used in a sentence. An in-your-face, hilarious assemblage filled with all of the euphemisms you may?and may not?have already heard, it includes:
 
?Pearl Necklace, n. ? A sexual act whereby a controlled ejaculation of semen around the neck and shoulders of the recipient leaves small, collected, pools of semen that roughly resemble pearls connected by thin strands of semen left in the dragging of the penis along the skin
 
?George Walker, n. ? A predisposition to anal intercourse or any anal activity that borders on obsession
 
?Rodeo, n. ? Attempting to maintain penetration of the recipient for eight seconds after informing him or her of your sexual encounters with any relative or close friend of the recipient
 
?Shooting Putty at the Moon, v. ? Male masturbation
 
?Snail Trail, n. ? Labia
 
Until now, no dictionary has ever attempted to record the fascinating and often raunchy inventory of English sexual euphemisms. Jordan Tate has confronted this task with gusto and the results are nothing short of gratifying. The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms is a hysterical, unabashed, and at times shocking compilation of every sexual euphemism you?ve ever heard?and many more you haven?t. It is perfect for those who still get a kick out of looking up dirty words in the dictionary.
 
About the Author
jordan tate attended Miami University?s Western College Program and earned a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2003. He is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Indiana University?s Henry Hope Radford School of Fine Arts. Some of his work is held in the permanent collection at the Kinsey Institute for Gender, Sex, and Reproduction. For more on Tate and his work, please visit www.JordanTate.com.

Saturday, January 27th, 8:00 PM
Arthur Magazine and Drag City PresentTrinie Dalton and Steve Krakow at Quimby?s!
 
Join us at Quimby?s as Arthur Magazine presents an evening of reading and discussion with Trinie Dalton and Steve Krakow.
 
For this event Trinie Dalton will read from her new novel, which isn\’t finished yet, about a witch and several of her monster friends. She?s in Illinois as a visiting writer at University Illinois Urbana Champaign, to celebrate the release of the new issue of their lit mag, Ninth Letter. Steve Krakow will be on hand to talk with Trinie Dalton about zines and other subcultural things.
 
Steve Krakow lives in Chicago and is the editor of Galactic Zoo Dossier and front man for Plastic Crimewave Sound. He is an organizer for the annual Million Tongues Festival at the Empty Bottle.
 
Trinie Dalton lives in Los Angeles. Her short story collection, WIDE EYED (Akashic) was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. She also co-edited DEAR NEW GIRL OR WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS (McSweeney\’s), an art/illustration book based on her archive of confiscated notes acquired while she taught high school. She writes about music for Arthur and the LA Weekly, writes film reviews for Amazon, and also writes catalogue essays for artists. Her work has appeared in magazines such as Bomb, Nerve, Purple, The Believer, and Ping Pong (Henry Miller Library\’s Journal). She has an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches Fiction at USC.

Mark Swartz to Read from H2O,
His New Eco-Noir Novel set in Chicago.
Center for Neighborhood Technology?s Bill Eyring to Introduce the Reading
Friday, January 19, 7:00 p.m. Quimby?s (1854 W. North Avenue, Chicago)
 
Mark Swartz\\\’s new novel H2O is set in Chicago in the year 2020. With the entire world facing a dire shortage of drinkable water, filters and drains engineer Hayden Shivers stumbles upon a method for synthesizing fake water, but the new product may not be the miracle it?s cracked up to be.
 
??? H2O has its own trailer at http://www.softskull.com/files/h20_trailer.swf ???
 
?Swartz\\\’s shrewd, jittery, and noirishly atmospheric speculative tale about a bumbling antihero and dire environmental trauma brings an irreverent and parrying voice to ecofiction and casts a fractured light on follies petty and catastrophic.?
?Donna Seaman, Booklist
 
Mark Swartz?s second novel, the noirish eco-satire H2O, makes Davis Guggenheim?s film An Inconvenient Truth look like a feel-good summer romance?[ H2O is] a fast, fun, ominous read.?
?Time Out New York
 
?A short, sharp shock–a jab to the eyeball and brain, H2O by Mark Swartz is as telling commentary on our society now as Don DeLillo?s White Noise was in its time. Savagely precise, clever but not shallow, Swartz\\\’s writing lacerates even as it\\\’s deeply, disturbingly funny.?
 
-Jeff VanderMeer
 
Mark Swartz is the author of Instant Karma (City Lights, 2002). His writing has appeared in the Village Voice, The Believer, Bomb, Bookforum, Chicago Reader, and other publications. Originally from Chicago, he lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his wife and daughter.
 
Bill Eyring is a Senior Engineer of the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), an organization dedicated to showing urban communities locally and all across the country how to develop more sustainably. Bill manages CNT?s green infastructure projects that focus on managing stormwater naturally, reducing flooding risk, and improving water quality. More information at
www.cnt.org
 

Jan 18th 7:30 PM
 
Balaam The Lame, Radon Chong, Adolph Schnitzel And His Wife Mirriam Present:
 
The Daniel And Daniel Show!
 
In this entertainment extravaganza, Daniel & Daniel will sacrifice Hake to The Porpoise-God, shine the light of The Mystical Mathematic Equation unto the mind of all mongoloids present (using the FOIL method) and manuever the facial muscles of any corpse in attendance, using techniques described in Raymond Roussel\’s \’Locus Solus.\’ All Set To Words And Music!
 
say what? for the night
Daniel Gleason = Paco P. Coltrane
Daniel Knox = Rock N\’ Ro

Zine Reading at Quimby?s!Saturday, December 9th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
Featuring:
 
Matt Coppens- Writes zine Panic Attack and drinks too much cheap beer.
Visit www.mattcoppens.blogspot.com
 
Matt Gauck- Writes zine Next Stop Adventure and is restless as hell.
Visit www.thedreamerandthefool.com
 
Billy- Writes zine Proof I Exist and is an employee at Uncle Fun.
Visit www.iknowbilly.com
 
Andrew Mall- Writes zine Living Proof and has glasses and eats burritoes.
Visit www.atm4.net