Category: Store Events

Winners of the 27th AnnualInternational 3-Day Novel Contest,Meghan Austin & Shannon Mullally read from their NovelLove BlockThursday, August 11th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
LOVE BLOCK by Meghan Austin and Shannon Mullally is the Winner of the 27th Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest. Love Block is a collaborative novel, written via phone and email by writers living on opposite ends of the United States. Through a series of correspondences, two secret agents debate, bicker and commiserate while they search for a mysterious cure for the lovelorn (possibly in the form of a \”love block\” potion that will foil any and all heartbreak). Love Block explores the question of whether or not humans should surrender to the idea of true love. It\’s funny, furious, sometimes crazy and always fast-moving, just like the 3-Day Novel contest itself.
 
Meghan Austin and Shannon Mullally met while earning their MFAs in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When they agreed to collaborate on this contest, Austin was living in Portland, Oregon and Mullally was living in Chicago. They both now live in Chicago, where they continue to study and write. Love Block is their first published novel.
 
The 3-Day Novel Contest has run every Labour Day Weekend for 28 years and has garnered a reputation as the cheeky and uncompromising rebel of literary forms. It has been called \”a fad,\” \”a threat,\” and a \”trial by deadline\” and it flies in the face of the notion that novels take years of angst to produce. Although every entrant desires the Grand Prize of publication and instant fame, most enter the contest to shake off writers\’ block and to kick up their creativity. They?ll sweat, they?ll cry, their fingers will cramp?they may go mad?and they might just produce something amazing. And if they win, they?ll be published.
 
Checkout : www.3daynovel.com

Jake Austen celebrates the release of his new bookTV-a-Go-Go – Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American IdolFriday August 26 8PM
 
Jake Austen is the editor of Roctober magazine, produces a cable-access children’s television rock show called Chic-a-Go-Go, and writes for magazines including Playboy. He is the editor of A Friendly Game of Poker.
 
TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol
From Elvis and a hound dog wearing matching tuxedos and the comic adventures of artificially produced bands to elaborate music videos and contrived reality-show contests, television ?as this critical look brilliantly shows? has done a superb job of presenting the energy of rock in a fabulously entertaining but patently “fake” manner. The dichotomy of “fake” and “real” music as it is portrayed on television is presented in detail through many generations of rock music: the Monkees shared the charts with the Beatles, Tupac and Slayer fans voted for corny American Idols, and shows like Shindig! and Soul Train somehow captured the unhinged energy of rock far more effectively than most long-haired guitar-smashing acts. Also shown is how TV has often delighted in breaking the rules while still mostly playing by them: Bo Diddley defied Ed Sullivan and sang rock and roll after he had been told not to, the Chipmunks’ subversive antics prepared kids for punk rock, and things got out of hand when Saturday Night Live invited punk kids to attend a taping of the band Fear. Every aspect of the idiosyncratic history of rock and TV and their peculiar relationship is covered, including cartoon rock, music programming for African American audiences, punk on television, Michael Jackson’s life on TV, and the tortured history of MTV and its progeny.
 
This will be a release party, with readings, rare video clip screenings and more.

McSweeney?s presentsSalvador Plascencia and Paul La FargeMonday, August 15th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
THE PEOPLE OF PAPER BY SALVADOR PLASCENCIA After his wife leaves him, Federico de la Fe and his daughter Little Merced depart the town of Las Tortugas, Mexico and head for Los Angeles. There, with the aid of a local street gang and the prophetic powers of a baby Nostradamus, they engage in an epic battle to find a cure for sadness. Mechanical tortoises, disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, a woman made of paper, and Rita Hayworth are a few of the players whose destinies intertwine in this story of war and lost love. The People of Paper is simultaneously a father-daughter immigration story, a wildly inventive reimagining of Southern Californian mythology, and an exploration of the limits of fiction. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects.
 
Salvador Plascencia was born in 1976 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Plascencia?s mother was a seamstress, his father a factory worker who moved frequently between California and their home in Jalisco. Growing up at his grandparents? farm, his extended family passed along a wealth of stories, some of which formed the inspiration for The People of Paper. His family eventually settled east of Los Angeles in the city of El Monte when Plascencia was eight years old. At the time, he spoke no English. Salvador Plascencia holds a BA in English from Whittier College and an MFA in fiction from Syracuse University. He received a National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Award in Fiction in 1996 and the Peter Nagoe Prize for Fiction in 2000. In 2001 he was awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, the first fellow in fiction. The People of Paper is Plascencia?s first novel. His first published fiction appeared in McSweeney?s No. 12.
 
THE FACTS OF WINTER BY PAUL POISSEL TRANSLATED BY PAUL LA FARGE
Paul Poissel was not born in 1848. As a young man, he did not set out to become the greatest Turkish architect in Paris. He did not fail to become the greatest Turkish architect in Paris. He never became a poet, or invented puzzles for an illustrated magazine. In 1904, he did not write this book, The Facts of Winter. Paul La Farge has translated (from the original French) this collection of dreams?funny, haunting, enigmatic?all dreamed by people in and around Paris in 1881. La Farge?s afterword investigates the Facts? creation, uncovering startling revelations, unknown truths, and new falsehoods.
 
La Farge is a frequent contributor to McSweeney?s and is the author of Haussmann, or the Distinction, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Artist of the Missing, winner of the California Book Award. He is also a leading scholar on the work of Paul Poissel, one of the least known of the little-known French ?tiny metaphysician? writers of the late 19th century.

Book Signing with Etienne Le ComteSaturday, July 2nd, 4:00 PMFREE
 
Etienne Le Comte, is the publisher and artist behind Visceral Hump productions who\’s just completed The Stink Like Dog Collected. This collection is 112 pages of crazy drawings, ranging from a simple cartoony style to pictures with a Where\’s Waldo level of visual intensity. Seven years in the making the Stink Like Dog material originally started off as a series of free flyers that were printed together in smaller zines.
 
Etienne Le Comte is a 32 years old UK native & self-taught artist.
 
Check out: www.solo-associates.co.uk

The Secret Lives of Librarians with Jenna Freedman, Travis Fristoe, Jenn Phillips-Bacher, Keith Helt, Celia Perez
 
Monday June 27th 7:00PM
 
25,000 library workers will invade Chicago the last weekend in June to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference. Five librarians will break away from the madness of the McCormick Place on Monday, June 27, 2005 to share their passion for those photocopied, cut and paste productions we all know and love–zines! Join this group of zine-making librarians as they read from their zines and reveal the inner lives of librarians that give lie to the stereotype of the repressed bun-wearing, Dewey Decimal obsessed shusher. Donations to benefit the Alternative Press Center are welcomed!
 
Bios:
Jenna Freedman, the Coordinator of Reference Services at Barnard College Library in NYC, NY, started a zine collection at the college last year. She is also a member of the library worker activist group Radical Reference that supports activists and independent journalists “online and in the street.” Her zine is the Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout-Out.
 
Learning at a tender age that astronauts had to have perfect vision, Travis Fristoe accepted his bespectacled fate and instead devoted himself to libraries, amateur protest music & salvaging discarded bikes. He’s been doing zines for half his life now, which seems a really long time.
 
Riot Librarrrian busted out from the minds of two underwhelmed and underworked library school students, Jenn Phillips-Bacher and Sara Pete. Armed with typewriters, glue sticks, and a novice’s moxie, the girls pounded out Issue #1. Team RL left the publishing world for real jobs in Library Land once the zine hit the stands and degrees were in hand. Jenn Phillip-Bacher currently works as a reference librarian at Skokie Public Library (IL).
 
A librarian-in-training, Keith Helt feels weird about bios in general, but has been making zines since he was a wee lad of 15. When he’s not learning how to archive, he’s fretting about his band, the Rories and the long overdue next issue of his zine, Flotation Device.
 
Inspired by “Sassy” magazine, punk rock, and the the silly notion that other people care to read all about her business, Celia Perez started making zines many years ago. She still can’t figure out layouts to save her life, but she continues to publish zines including I Dreamed I Was Assertive, and most recently, Skate Tough You Little Girls, a zine about women in skateboarding. She is a reference and instruction librarian at Harold Washington College in Chicago where, in addition to helping students find information, she spends much of her time asking them to turn off their cell phones.
 
Links:
Alternative Press Center (http://www.altpress.org/)
Barnard College Library Zine Collection (http://www.barnard.edu/library/zines/)
Radical Reference (http://www.radicalreference.info/ALA)

THE2NDHAND presents an evening of readings!
Saturday, July 9th, 7:30 PM
FREE
 
THE2NDHAND broadsheet, that 11″x17″ slap of glossy paper you’ve come to know and love over the years, is undergoing something of a metamorphosis. This reading celebrates the last “issue as you know it,” #17, and even now it’s a little fucked-up: I mean, what’s with the color? THE2NDHAND #17 features fiction by American expatriated to Egypt M. Lynx Qualey and Chicagoans Joe Meno and, for the first time in THE2NDHAND, C.T. Ballentine, making this the issue of initials, maybe, to end all issues of initials. OK, seriously, this one is damned good, and it’s the last with more than one writer (THE2NDHAND’s 11″x17″ slap of paper will herewith feature a single, long story), so get out here and pick it up, damnit. We’ll tell you stories while you’re here.
 
With readings from:
 
C.T. Ballentine lives and writes in Chicago. His “Never Die During Winter” is featured in THE2NDHAND #17. He also publishes the zine Aftercrossward Special.
 
Jeb Gleason-Allured is THE2NDHAND’s web submissions editor in addition to being a sort-of genius.
 
Joe Meno is author most recently of the novel Hairstyles of the Damned and a contributor to a host of magazines and journals, including Punk Planet. A story collection, Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir, is due out this fall, and Meno’s “Animals in the Zoo” short story is featured in THE2NDHAND #17
 
Jonathan Messinger is proprietor at thisisgrand.org, where he catalogs stories of Chicago’s rapid transit. He’s also a fine writer.
 
Todd Dills, THE2NDHAND’s editor emeritus, or something, will host.

Book Event forWOMEN AND SOCIALISMEssays on Women’s LiberationBy Sharon SmithSaturday June 25th 4PM
 
Join Sharon Smith as she discusses WOMEN AND SOCIALISM (Haymarket Books 2005). Three decades have passed since the heyday of the women’s liberation movement, yet women remain oppressed the world over. Mainstream feminism has shifted steadily rightward since the 1970s–embracing Bush’s war on Afghanistan in 2001, and even endorsing Democratic Party efforts to seek “common ground” with abortion opponents after John Kerry’s defeat in 2004. This approach has proven disastrous for women, from the US to Afghanistan.
 
This collection of essays examines these issues from a Marxist perspective–addressing the reasons why women are oppressed, the different nature of oppression between women of different social classes, and the basis for building a movement that can end women’s oppression, along with all other forms of inequality.
 
“Sharon Smith’s work, spanning three decades of events affecting women, provides a valuable and uncommon perspective on the oppression and liberation of women. Her understanding of the grounding of women’s oppression in class society, her vision of solidarity among women and men, and her critique of ideologies of seism and the rollback of the women’s movement are tremendously important contributions to women’s studies. More than that, the accessible writing and incisive assessment of the movement’s gains and losses are indispensible for activists for women’s liberation today.”–Dana Cloud, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, University of Texas, Austin
 
Sharon Smith is the author of numerous articles on women’s liberation and the US working class. Her writings appear regularly in Socialist Worker newspaper, Counterpunch website, and the International Socialist Review.
 
Haymarket Books is a non-profit, progressive book distributor and publisher based in Chicago; that has relationships with various social justice and activist campus-based groups in the city.
 

SLEAZOID EXPRESS 25TH ANNIVERSARYFriday, June 24th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
This June, the groundbreaking cinema publication Sleazoid Express celebrates its twenty fifth anniversary. Sleazoid Express was originally founded by Bill Landis. In June 1980, living in the George Washington Hotel on 23rd Street with only a manual typewriter at his disposal, Landis created the first issue of Sleazoid Express.
 
The periodical became a one-sheet bi-weekly giveaway at bookstores, record stores and any sort of venue where people displayed a strong interest in film One theory driving Sleazoid Express was that there were no distinctions between art, underground and exploitation movies. Sleazoid Express also featured tie-in screenings at hipster venues such as the Club 57, the Mudd Club, and Danceteria. Classic exploitation and underground movies including Mondo Cane, Toys Are Not For Children and The Chelsea Girls were shown to overcapacity crowds. It held the first major festival of exploitation movies at New York?s culty Rocky Horror showcase at the 8the
 
By the end of 1981 Sleazoid developed into less of a periodical specifically about motion pictures than a document of Landis? participational experiences in Times Square. These included stints as adult theater manager, projectionist, ticket taker, and involvement in a host of vice related activity that fell between these cracks.
 
By this time in the mid-1980s, Sleazoid Express became portrayed by such periodicals as Rolling Stone and Film Comment. Sleazoid Express became recognized as the original movie ?zine,? as well as a living, breathing document of the red lit Times Square lifestyle.
 
These articles about Landis?s work in Sleazoid Express attracted the attention of burgeoning film writer and sexual documentarian Michelle Clifford. They collaborated on pieces for publications including Film Comment, The Village Voice, Hustler, Carbon 14, the book on the HIV situation Beyond Crisis and an ACLU handbook on the same, and Screw on the heyday of Times Square. Together the two collaborated on the biography of underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Anger: the Unauthorized Biography (HarperCollins, 1995).
 
Clifford took the Sleazoid aesthetic one step further by declaring no difference between pornographic, art, exploitation and underground films. In 1997, she founded her ?journal of sexual curiousity,? Metasex. Metasex concentrated on the illusion created by adult movies as compared to the real lives of their performers and makers and the entire vice lifestyle of the old Times Square.
 
In 1999, Clifford partnered with Landis to revamp Sleazoid Express and authored Sleazoid Express: A Mind Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouses of Times Square (Simon and Schuster, 2002), a look at the aesthetics of key exploitation films and genres seen within the theatrical settings of the old Times Square. The book reached a whole new young audience of film fans who had become familiar with the movies through the advent of home video and DVD.
 
Landis and Clifford continue to collaborate on Sleazoid Express and Metasex in monograph form, and have published eleven issues of their publications.
Sleazoid Express is on the web at www.sleazoidexpress.com and Metasex?s website appears at www.metasex.org. Both have recently relocated to Chicago and will be on hand with a new issue of Sleazoid Express to discuss and sign.
 

Nostalgia Digest MagazineSaturday, June 18th, 4:00 PM
 
Steve Darnall is the editor and publisher of Nostalgia Digest Magazine, a publication devoted to chronicling life and popular culture during the first half of the 20th century. Every issue of Nostalgia Digest Magazine features original articles covering all aspects of life during the “Golden Age” of entertainment (radio, movies, music, television), written by those who lived it and those who love it.
 
The new Summer issue of Nostalgia Digest Magazine features articles by Radio Hall of Fame member Norman Corwin and Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Kevin Murphy, in addition to articles about Mel Blanc, The Lost Weekend, singer Wanda Jackson, tempestuous musician Artie Shaw, artist J.C. Leyendecker, the gone-but-not-forgotten Olson Rug Waterfall, science fiction on radio and much more!
 
In lieu of doing a ‘reading” Steve Darnell will spend a little time discussing the modern-day relevance of the Golden Age of Radio, with sound samples and perhaps a surprise or two.

April 20 2005, 7:30 PM
Also not at Quimby’s but we’ll be selling books there:
Nextbook sponsors Esther Freud
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOT AT QUIMBYS!!!!!!!!!!
You must go to:
Beat Kitchen, 2100 W Belmont
Don’t miss Esther Freud, daughter of the artist Lucian Freud and
great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Her first book, Hideous
Kinky, about two small girls and their bohemian mother in Morocco, was based
on her own nomadic childhood (and made into an amazing film with Kate
Winslet). Her latest book, The Sea House, darts between past
and present: an architect, his wife, and a German refugee in 1953, and a
young woman 50 years later, piecing their letters and lives back together.
Freud’s other novels include Peerless Flats, Summer at Gaglow, and The Wild.
In 1993, she was selected by Granta as one of the 20 Best Young British
Novelists.
For more info about Nextbook events, see
http://www.nextbook.org/localprograms/chicago_readings.html