Category: Store Events

Jessica Abel signs booksSaturday, April 8th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
La Perdida is the story of Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, who heads to Mexico City to ?find herself.? Her intense desire to make a connection with Mexico and her unwillingness to see the impact of her own history on her understanding combine to turn an innocent journey down a dark path. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida?at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal?is a story about finding yourself by getting lost.
La Perdida originally appeared in serialized form from 2001-2005, published by Fantagraphics Books.
 
Jessica Abel is a cartoonist and writer. Born and raised in Chicagoland, she moved in 2000 to Brooklyn, New York, after a two-year pit stop in Mexico City. In her ?free? time, she likes to build things, garden, and cook, and hopes that doesn?t make her sound like the biggest dork ever. Along with La Perdida she is also responsible for the popular comic Artbabe.

Radio Plays Release EventSaturday, April 1st7:00 PMFREE
 
C T Ballentine proudly presents the first issue of RADIO PLAYS!
 
RADIO PLAYS is not a traditional zine; it is actually an audio periodical in CD format containing exclusive performances of two radio dramas. One play is an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by Todd Dills entitled, Sons of the Rapture, which tells the tale of a desperately indebted young man\’s Ryder truck journey to freedom. The other play is a surrealistic little jaunt written by CT Ballentine called, The Cowboy and His Blazing Trumpets. The audio tale of the mysterious and dangerous Sam, who is out for the doctor\’s blood with nothing standing between them but a robotic secretary of indeterminate gender.
 
For this event both radio plays will be presented and there will also be readings from:
Todd Dills (the2ndhand)
A.B. Drea (Banana King)
Jeb Gleason-Allured

Artist Winston Smith LIVEFriday, March 24th, 6:30 PMFREE
 
Winston Smith, is a collage artist best known for his surrealistic and satirical montage book cover and album cover art since the late 1970s Punk Era (Dead Kennedys, DOA, etc.) up through the present with Green Day, George Carlin, Greg Palast, among others. He will be in the store to sign copies of his monographs and possibly some album covers if you bring them.
 
More information including interviews and examples of his artwork is available on the web site: www.winstonsmith.com

The real Brian Costello, Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs release party.Saturday, March 11th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Celebrate the release of Brian Costello?s first novel Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs with an evening of readings featuring:
 
Brian Costello teaches fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago, drums for the Functional Blackouts and hosts The Brian Costello Show with Brian Costello, America’s first and only live talk show. The Enchanters is his first novel.
 
Megan Stielstra is a writer, teacher and waitress living in Chicago. She edits Sleepwalk magazine and was artist-in-residence for Barefoot Productions where she created collaborative storytelling with musicians and filmmakers. She’s performed for Storyweek, Undershorts Film Festival, Piece by Piece and 2nd Story.
 
Gary Johnson is an accomplished writer, teacher and activist. He currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago.
 
All three will read from original work and Brian will sign copies of his new book, they’ll serve some sort of tasty beverage, and for the faithful, they might even dish out some cough syrup.

Sex Machines slide show and lecture with author Timothy ArchibaldFriday, March 31st, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews unveils an astonishing American subculture and the homespun inventors and users who propel it. Meet a laid-off tech industry exec who transforms a thrift store pasta maker into a high-powered sexual appliance and a new career, an apocalyptic visionary who builds a sex machine prototype for female survivors of a future without men, and an Idaho cowboy who intends to use his device as a form of Christian-based marriage counseling. Sex Machines celebrates the spirit of American ingenuity and bold approaches to an ever-changing sexual landscape.
 
Author and photographer Timothy Archibald?s photographs have appeared in New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, GQ, The New Yorker, and Outside Magazine. His photographs are included in the permanent collection of The Catskill Center for Photography in Woodstock, N.Y. and The Museum of Sex in New York City. Archibald lives in San Francisco with his wife, Cheri, and two sons, Elijah and Wilson. Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews is his first book.
 
For this event Timothy Archibald will presents slides from the book and discuss his experiences making it.

Stories Care Forgot eventTuesday, March 28th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
STORIES CARE FORGOT is an anthology of zines from and about New Orleans. For years the Crescent City’s thriving punk and zine community has produced beautifully rendered volumes of writing and artwork. Authors have poured their hearts out, sharing their thoughts and opinions on music, politics, bikes, gentrification, gender, class and, of course, the city itself. These tales come complete with the beauty, sadness, strangeness and eccentricity that has drawn people to New Orleans for so long. Featured are selections from over a dozen zines including Chainbreaker, Nosedive, Crude Noise, Rocket Queen, Emergency, I Hate This Part of Texas and Chihuahua and pitbull. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many of the originals of these zines have been lost or destroyed. This book serves not only as a presevation, but also, by donating author proceeds towards grassroots organizations, as a step towards rebuilding the city that inspired and shaped this body of work.
 
On hand for the event will be Ethan Clark Editor of Stories Care Forgot, & Chihuahua and Pitbull zine. He is also a sometimes contributor to Maximum Rock and Roll and the Asheville Global Report.
 

Oyez Review #33 readingSaturday, March 4th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
This is a reading/launch party for Oyez Review Volume 33. Oyez Review is an award-winning literary magazine published annually by Roosevelt University’s Creative Writing Program. It features poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, and a portfolio of artwork.
 
The featured reader for the evening will be Elizabeth Aiossa author of the creative nonfiction piece Swell. She teaches English at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois and is also an associate editor of Willow Review. She recently received her MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University, specializing in creative nonfiction.
 
The reading will also feature other authors reading their selections from the new issue of the Oyez Review.
 
more info at www.roosevelt.edu/oyezreview.

Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, & Anders Nilsen at Quimby?s!Saturday, February 25th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics Books, and the center for Cartoon Studies are proud to present comic artists; Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga & Anders Nilsen on tour.
 
Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles on May 21st 1980. His comic strip Poor Sailor, originally published in Kramers Ergot 4, was subsequently included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2004 and has been published in French, Korean, and Italian. He was nominated in 2002 for an Ignatz Award for \’Promising New talent\’, and Kramers Ergot has been favorably reviewed and placed on numerous best of the year list\’s including the LA Weekly, Dazed And Confused, The Comics Journal, and Publisher\’s Weekly. Harkham currently lives in Los Angeles working on his comic series Crickets and the next volume of Kramers Ergot.
 
Kevin Huizenga was born in 1977 in Harvey, IL and spent most of his childhood in South Holland, IL, near Chicago. He began drawing comics in high school, Xeroxing his first issue (with friends) at the neighborhood Jewel Osco in 1993. In 2001 the Comics Journal named him \”Minimalism Cartoonist of the Year\” and called #14 of his Supermonster mini-comic series \”one of the best comics of any kind released in 2001.\” In 2001 he also started the Catastrophe Shop http://www.usscatastrophe.com, an online shop for self-published mini-comics Kevin won an Ignatz for his D+Q story GLENN GANES In the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #1. His new comic Or Else is the first series Drawn & Quartley have launched by a new cartoonist since OPTIC NERVE.
 
Anders Nilsen was born in rural Northern New Hampshire in 1973 and grew up on a steady diet of comics and stories, from Tintin and the X-Men to Raw and Weirdo. He attended college at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, studying art and doing political work followed by a stint in graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. After college a group of paintings he did developed into an artists book called The Ballad of the Two Headed Boy. The graphic nature of this book moved him toward comics. While Anders still makes other kinds of work, it\’s the comics that seem to have a life of their own, receiving two Ignatz nominations for Big Questions #4 in 2002 as well as a Xeric and several grants from the City of Chicago to help keep him making them. Nielsen is currently working on finishing Big Questions as well as a couple of further collections of strips from his sketchbooks. Dogs and Water is his new comic published by Drawn and Quarterly.
 

Michel Valdes author of School DazeThurs, Feb. 23rd at 7:30pmfree
 
School Daze details the accounts of one year Michel
worked as a teacher\’s assistant at an elementary
school in Los Angeles, CA. The zine debuted at
Portland Zine Symposium in 2005. Michel is 25 years
old and recently hired as a Special Education Teacher
at his old middle school. The zine is more text heavy
but has some drawings Michel did of his encounters.

Signing for Nano Stories with artist Michael MillerFriday, February 17th5:00-7:00 PMFREE
 
Sara Ranchouse publishes and distributes books and printed multiples by artists. NANO – Stories in a Blink by Michael Miller is the third in the \”SQUARE COMICS\” series.
 
Miller Miller makes collages, drawings, watercolors and digital prints that borrow from the conventions of editorial cartoons. For NANO Stories, Miller has configured his work into a sequential, narrative format. NANO presents two back-to-back visual stories–FACE TO FACE, a spinning rat race of nano-second confrontations and FLATMAN, a flat man\’s adventures in and about everyday foibles.
 
Michael Miller will be on hand to sign copies of NANO Stories. A mini-exhibition of Michael\’s work will accompany the signing.
 
More info about the artist www.michaelmillerart.com