Category: Store Events

Reading for Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired FictionThursday, Feburary 9th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
We live in political times where it is impossible not to be involved, inspired, appalled, or motivated by the current administration. It seems like everyone has something to say about politics these days ? and fiction writers are no exception. This came to the forefront of Stephen Elliott?s mind following the 2001 elections and the attacks of September 11th, when he and his fellow novelists began to question their focus and the relevance of their work in such times. Unconsciously, current events had seeped into their writing?and thus Politically Inspired was born.
 
Featured Readers at this event:
 
Stephen Elliott is the author of four novels, including Happy Baby, and the political memoir Looking Forward to It: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The American Political Process. He recently journeyed to the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina and contributed several articles to Salon.com. Stephen Elliott is available for interview and comment on this new release.
 
Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and visual artist who lives in Chicago, where almost everyone she knows has been quietly despondent ever since the last election and where the only words that bring any cheer are ?Barack Obama.?
 
Jeff Parker?s stories recently appeared in Hobart, Ploughshares, Tin House, and Life & Limb: Skateboarders Write from the Deep End. For the past seven years he has co-directed Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, and he co-edited Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. The Drinking Game, a short story collection in the form of instructions, will be published by Jovian Books in 2006.
 
Stefan Kiesbye is the author of the novel Next Door Lived A Girl. In West Berlin in the 1980s, he worked as an actor, coffeehouse reader, drag queen, and nude model. As a radio show host, he covered the ?91 Contributors 327 Gulf War. Stefan currently lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Sanaz and is working on a new novel. You can visit him at www.skiesbye.com.
 
More info is at: www.stephenelliott.com
 

Lickin? the Beaters presentsSweet and Crumbly a vegan dessert potluckSunday, February 5th, 3:00 PMFREE
 
Lickin\’ the Beaters presents Sweet and Crumbly – a vegan desert potluck focusing on cookies and candy. Siue Moffat is preparing for her 2nd vegan desserts cookbook, Lickin\’ the Beaters 2 – Candy and Chocolate, and is coming to Quimby\’s to share her new concoctions. Caramels, suckers, sour creem candy, fudge, centered chocolates etc. Everything a vegan dreams of eating in a cruelty free form. Participants are asked to bring their own homemade candy or cookies, sans eggs and dairy, to share. Siue will also be happy to answer questions on self-publishing and candy making. If you don\’t know the difference between saddle stitch and perfect bound or fudge and pralines now is your chance to find out!
 
Siue Moffat made vegan cooking zines before moving into full fledged publishing with Lickin\’ the Beaters: Low Fat Vegan Desserts. Illustarted by eight fantastic artists, Siue jumped in and produced Lickin? the Beaters entirely herself from layout and design, photos and index. She often finds herself spending hours over a pot of boiling syrup trying to replicate all the sweets she use to eat before turning vegan in 1997. Lickin\’ the Beaters 2, is currently in high gear recipe testing mode, and will feature chococolate confections, baked goods and candy. Currently Siue is a super 8 filmmaking, radical bookslinging, film archiving candy queen who spends her time between Portland Oregon and Toronto Canada.

Dave Eggers and James Newsomeread and discussSurviving JusticeMonday, January 23rd, 12:00 PMFREE
 
McSweeney?s is proud to release the first in a new series of oral histories books, Surviving Justice: America\’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, edited by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen. After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence — including 120 from death row — have been released from America\’s prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings — inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside.
 
The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others — thousands by all estimates — who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way.
 
Featured Readers at this event:
Dave Eggers is the editor of McSweeney?s and the author of three books, including How We Are Hungry and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As a journalist, his work has appeared in the The New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, the UK Guardian, and other publications.
 
James Newsome?exoneree–was living on the South Side of Chicago when a white grocer was shot to death in a convenience store. Officers from the notoriously corrupt Area 2 police station made Newsome their prime suspect. Eyewitnesses misidentified him in a police lineup, and an all-white jury sentenced him to life. He served fifteen years before being exonerated by fingerprints lifted from the crime scene and matched to an already incarcerated career criminal. After his release, Newsome won a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the City of Chicago. He now owns a shoe store there??Heelz.?

Dancing Girl press presents an evening of poetryWednesday, January 18th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Join us for readings by three authors published in the dancing girl press chapbook series. w/ brief signing afterwards. Featuring:
 
Carol V. Davis\’ poems have won awards and appeared in journals and anthologies in many countries, including Ireland, Israel, Australia and Sweden. Her poetry has been featured on NPR and on Radio Russia. She is the author of two books of poetry: Letters From Prague and It\’s Time to Talk About. A Fulbright scholar in St. Petersburg in 1996 and 2005, she teaches at Santa Monica College, CA.
 
Marissa Spalding is an MFA in Poetry at Columbia College.
 
K.R. Copeland is a frequently published Chicago poet/digital photographer. Her written work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Stirring, The Muse Apprentice Guild, Sidereality, Cranky, Triplopia, Wicked Alice and Swivel. Her photos have made it into Lily, Rock Salt Plum, LitPot, and Ken*Again. K.R. is also one of two judges for the ongoing Beginnings Magazine poetry competitions.
 
For info about dancing girl press:
www.angelfire.com/poetry/dancinggirlpress

Dan Gleason reads and makes you laugh then cringeThurs. Dec. 15th 8PM FREE
 
Direct from Dan’s mind, we hired a psychic:Discover how Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy set race relations back seventy to eighty decades, how Patrick Swayze’s over-powering sexuality turned all late ’80’s straight males gay, and enjoy the inane scribings of Daniel James Gleason, all at this single pre-holiday event.

Signing for 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden
Saturday, December 3rd, 7 PM
FREE
Matt Madden?s Exercises in Style is a series of engrossing one-page comics that tell the same story in a variety of ways. Inspired by Raymond Queneau?s 1947 work of the same title, a mainstay of creative writing courses that The New York Times Book Review called ?truly original? upon its initial publication, Madden?s project demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities available to all storytellers. The project developed a cult following from its inception in 1998, and in early 2004, Madden launched www.EXERCISESINSTYLE.com, a site showcasing the project, finding a broad audience and immediate critical attention and praise. The website was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
 
99 WAYS TO TELL A STORY is a collection of the complete ?Exercises in Style? project, illustrating all 99 different graphic approaches to telling the same story. Readers are taken on an enlightening tour?sometimes surprising, always amusing?through the world of the story.
 
For the event Matt Madden will be signing 99 Ways to Tell a Story.
 
Matt Madden started self-publishing minicomics in the early 1990s. He published his first graphic novel, Black Candy in 1998, and in 2001 published Odds Off. Madden lives in Brooklyn with his wife, author and cartoonist Jessica Abel. He works in comics and illustration, and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Yale University. His latest works appear in A Fine Mess, his bi-annual series published by Alternative Comics.
 
Check out:
www.mattmadden.com
www.exercisesinstyle.com
 

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Nov 13th 5PM
FREE
Join members of the “Diamonds on Archer” collective as they demonstrate how silk screening works. Bring items to be screened and walk out with a new take on fashion and D.I.Y. printing.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org

Friday November 18th 7PM
Kevin Coval Book Release, reading, signing for the book of poems, Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, published by EM Press (www.em-press.com)
 
KEVIN COVAL has performed on four continents in seven countries at universities, high schools, and conferences, including; The Parliament of the World?s Religions in Capetown, South Africa, The African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, Yale, Stanford, St. Xavier?s in Bombay, India and four seasons of Russell Simmons HBO Def Poetry Jam, for which he also serves as an artistic consultant.
 
Coval?s writing has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution (Source Books), Awakening The Spirit (Skylight Paths), XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reporter, Cross Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Garland Court Review, The Daily Herald, The Courier News, Fly Paper, seen on C-Span and can be heard regularly on WBEZ?s 848 on Chicago Public Radio.
 
Co-founder of The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival: Louder Than A Bomb, Coval is the Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and a Co-Producer of The Hip-Hop Theater Festival- Chicago.
 

Saturday Nov 12th 8PMBluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir Release Party
featuring bird-themed readings from:
 
Joe Meno has a new book of short stories Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir from Triquarterly Press.
Megan Stielstra is an amazing fiction writer whose work as appeared frequently in Sleepwalk magazine.
Jonathan Messinger curates the Dollar Store Reading Series and is responsible for Thisisgrand.org
Anne E. Moore is associate publisher for Punk Planet magazine and is sharp.
Susannah Felts teaches writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She contributes regularly to the Chicago Reader, and recently completed a novel

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Nov 6th
FREE
Gutters Special Southside edition 5PM
Gutters is a free independent printed media workshop with an emphasis on
minicomics and zines. Gutters has two main goals, the first being teaching
people all about indie printed media. We do this by bringing in special
guests for demos and discussions. If it’s on paper and there’s more than
one
of them, we’ll show you how to do it. The other goal is to help the DIY
publishing community here in Chicago get to know one another. There is a
social aspect to all of our events, and we really want to get people
together and excited about self-publishing. Gutters is free and open to
anyone. We normally meet the last Sunday of every month at Chicago Comics,
3244 N. Clark from 3 to 6PM. So this will be a special edition. For more
info check our blog at myspace.com/gutterszine.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org