Category: Store Events

Joseph Suglia reads from Years of Rage
Saturday, May 14th, 8:00 PM
 
Joseph Suglia earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University in 2002. He now teaches at several universities in Chicago. Besides H?lderlin and Blanchot on Self-Sacrifice, a book-length study of the theme of martyrdom in modern literature, his writing and literary criticism has been published in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies, including diacritics, Germanic Notes and Reviews, German Life and Letters, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Focus on German Studies, Literature and the Law, and The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel. Suglia also regularly contributes to the online magazine, YouthQuake.
 
YEARS OF RAGE was considered by many presses to be ?too intense? and ?too controversial? for publication. No one denied its literary merit, but many were afraid of the book because it forced readers to identify with the young killer who serves as its main character and narrator.
 
Inspired by the Columbine High Massacre, Years of Rage takes place inside of the head of a schoolboy who is bent on murdering his classmates. We, as readers, see what he sees. We think what he thinks. We feel what he feels. We enter a nightmarish world in which it is impossible to separate objective reality from the phantoms of the mind, a world where there are no limits, a world where desire gears toward destruction, a world where love merges with violence.
 
There is a great deal more going on in his new book Years of Rage than merely a response to school shootings. Suglia wanted to write a novel about a self that is ?universally rejected.? The horizons of high school, according to the logic of Years of Rage, are the horizons of the universe. ?Columbine? served as the perfect occasion for writing about this relationship between the self and the world.
 
Check out www.yearsofrage.com

Oyez #32 Release Event Saturday, February 12th, 2:00 PM
 
FREE
 
The Oyez Review is published by the students of Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL. Rachel Jamison Webster, Angela Carter, and Oyez staff members will read from the Oyez #32 at this event.

Stefan Kiesbye reads & signs
Next Door Lived a Girl
Friday, January 28th, 8:00 PM
FREE
 
The winner of Low Fidelity Press’s first novella contest, Stefan Kiesbye was born on Northern Germany’s Baltic coast and grew up in West Berlin. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. Stefan Kiesbye’s stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He currently teaches writing at Eastern Michigan University and works as a freelance writer. Stefan Kiesbye will be reading and signing Next Door Lived a Girl at the event.
More info is at the Low Fidelity Press website: www.lofipress.com
 
Reviews:
“This is Stefan Kiesbye’s brilliant debut, a book so quiet and yet so maddeningly powerful, you just have to wonder about him a little bit. You will read from beginning to end and you will feel this world and its inhabitants neither responding nor reacting in ways you quite expect, but nevertheless, rising up beneath you in a most compelling and unsettling way, and when you are through you will scratch your head and tell someone they have to read it too.”
-Robert Olmstead, 2004 Novella Award judge
 
“Kiesbye’s dark, distinctive vision of humanity, is composed with such narrative skill and verve as to render the bleakness bracing, the grimness utterly gripping. A significant and powerful debut.”
-Peter Ho Davies
 
“Next Door Lived a Girl is both laconic and feverish, with German adolescent boys poking their sometimes violent way into the world. The violence here is somehow both surprising and inevitable. The novella has a fascinating combination of everyday domestic life and subsurface violence, and Stefan Kiesbye is to be praised for this quietly eloquent tale, this mixture of the horrifying and the everyday.” -Charles Baxter
 

Stephen Elliot reads & signs
Happy Baby
 
Wednesday January 26th 7PM
 
FREE
Stephen Elliott is the author of four novels, as well as the nonfiction book LOOKING FORWARD TO IT: OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE ELECTORAL PROCESS. He is also the editor of the anthology POLITICALLY INSPIRED. A native of Chicago, he currently lives in San Francisco and lectures at Stanford University. An active political and literary blogger, you can learn more about Stephen Elliott and his books by visiting his website at www.stephenelliott.com.
 
HAPPY BABY is a haunting look inside America?s foster care system even as its fully drawn characters and fresh prose make it a rewarding and lasting work of fiction. Stephen Elliott draws on his own experiences as a ward of the court in Chicago to tell the story of Theo, once an orphan in the foster care system and now a grown man living in California. Saturated with memories of abuse and heartache, and filled with the simple wish to understand more about himself, Theo returns to Chicago to reconnect with an old girlfriend from his troubled youth.
 
Told in reverse order, this edgy novel turns mysterious as Elliott takes us backward in time, from San Francisco to Amsterdam to Chicago, as we attempt to recognize the root of Theo?s plight and the source for his quietly wavering humanity. The personal nature of this story has allowed Elliott to write about it with uncommon insight and unequaled empathy, leaving the reader with a tale that is gritty and subversive while simultaneously tender and heartbreaking.
 

Underground Chicago Wintertime Fantasy Night
with
Joe Meno,
Todd Dills,
Amber Drea,
Joe Deir &
Laura Negrete
 
Saturday, January 29th, 8:00 PM
FREE
Join Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned and contributing editor to Punk Planet Magazine, Todd Dills, editor of the 2nd Hand and All Hands On, Amber Drea, editor of Banana King zine, and Joe Deir and Laura Negrete, editors of Ink Stains for an evening of readings.

Join Josh Schollmeyer and
The Randee Players for the release of Randee II: The Legend of Randee?s Gold
Saturday, January 15th, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
After 15 months in prison for breaking and entering, Josh Schollmeyer and the Randee Players make their triumphant return to Quimby’s with the second issue of their awardless satire magazine Randee–full title: Randee II: The Legend of Randee’s Gold. Come out and enjoy the magazine NO ONE in America is talking about.
 
Along with reading and performing passages from Randee II: The Legend of Randee’s Gold. The Authors will–if in fact anyone actually wants them to–sign issues as well.
 
For more info check out www.randee-online.com.
 

Tony Fitzpatrick signsThe Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered CityFriday, January 14th, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, a collection of new works by Chicago artist, writer and raconteur Tony Fitzpatrick. Stories of his city and its denizens permeate Fitzpatrick?s art, already in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In his recent work, Fitzpatrick spins magical tales from his own history and that of his beloved city via drawing-collages, vivid combinations of drawing, text and applied elements like matchbooks, postcards, gambling slips and ballgame stubs. In this gorgeous book, Fitzpatrick introduces the first set of drawing-collages as chapters in an ongoing project that is both personal diary and chronicle of Chicago: \”This is a city of bars, broads, gambling and political shenanigans. It is also a city of grace, as magical, in its own way, as Paris or Bombay. It is gypsy music and flamenco dancers and Celtic poetry. You just have to keep your eyes open.\”
 
Tony Fitzpatrick will be signing copies of his book at this event.

The 2nd Hand celebratesthe release of LE2EMEMAINThursday, December 16th, 7:30 PM
 
THIS EVENT celebrates the release of LE2EMEMAIN, the f-r-e-e-d-o-m (for one dare not speak the word aloud) issue and installment 15 in THE2NDHAND\’s broadsheet series. Reading for the event are Marc Baez, Emerson Dameron, Susannah Felts and Todd Dills. Baez will red from his contributions to LE2EMEMAIN, a catalog of LOVE LETTERS FOR SALE. The entire performance will end with a dramatic rendition of Baez’s “Talking to Strangers,” a series of street monologues in prose form featured in the best-of THE2NDHAND anthology ALL HANDS ON.
 
Marc Baez is a frequent contributor to THE2NDHAND; his work is featured in our brand-new issue 15, LE2EMEMAIN, as well as the recently released best-of anthology ALL HANDS ON.
 
Emerson Dameron was born and reared in Western North Carolina. Sometimes he yearns, sometimes he publishes the zine Wherewithal. His work appears in the Whirligig, Slush Pile, A Shout in the Street and various other scrappy organs, including THE2NDHAND. He enjoys music, sex, food and fun.
 
Susannah Felts’s “Forecast Poems” series was recently part of the Code Is Implement faculty/grad show at SAIC’s 1926 Exhibition space but debuted at THE2NDHAND.com. Felts is a instructor in writing at the school, and her work has been featured in numerous magazines.
 
Todd Dills is the founding editor and publisher of THE2NDHAND. He lives in Chicago.
 

Comic SigningAnders Nilsen author of Dogs & Water, Big Questionsand Kevin Huizengaauthor of Or Else#1, SupermonsterSaturday December 11th 4PM
 
Join comics authors Kevin Huizenga and Anders Nilsen as they sign their new comic books published by Drawn & Quarterly
 
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. Check: www.theholyconsumption.com
 

Lost in the Grooves eventwith David Smay
Russ Forster, Jake Austen, James Porter, Gene Booth & Erin McKeanSaturday, December 4th, 7:30 PM
 
LOST IN THE GROOVES BOOK RELEASE PARTY!
Featuring: David Smay (Scram Magazine), Russ Forster (8-Track Mind), Jake Austen (Roctober), James Porter (Roctober), Gene Booth (Mantis), Erin McKean (Verbivore)
 
David Smay, the co-editor of the new book Lost in the Grooves – Scram’s Capricious Guide to Music You Missed (Routledge) joins the Chicago writers who contributed to this unique tome for an evening of music, video, reading, puppetry and free bubblegum. In celebration of this book, which acknowledges unjustly obscure recordings by famed and unknown musicians, rare videos by artists in the book (including David Alan Coe, the Chipmunks, Tony Joe White and the Who) will be screened. This will be followed by an Inside the Actor?s Studio-style interview of Mr. Smay by Ratso, the puppet host of local cable-access show Chic-A-Go-Go. Concluding the evening will be the writers reading their entries, followed by their own musical interpretations of their subject?s songs. Refreshments will include free bubblegum, recognizing Mr. Smay?s previous book on bubblegum music.
 
Lost in the Grooves – Scram’s Capricious Guide to Music You Missed (edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay with illustrations by Tom Neely) is required reading for all vinyl junkies and lovers of the obscure, wild, and weird. Contributors include Richard Meltzer, Rick Moody, Jim O?Rourke, Kelly Kuvo, Peter Bagge and the late Greg Shaw. Lost in the Grooves is a fascinating guide to the back alleys off the pop-music super highway, covering such gems as Peter Laughner’s “Take the Guitar Player for A Ride,” John Trubee’s “The Communists Are Coming to Kill Us,” Chad & Jeremy’s “Of Cabbages and King,” John Phillips’s “Wolf King of L.A.,” Swamp Dogg’s “Total Destruction to Your Mind,” Don Cole’s “The Outer Limits of Twang,” and Michel Magne’s “Moshe Mouse Crucifiction.” Pop music history is full of little-known musicians, whose work stands defiantly alone, too quirky, distinctive, or demented to appeal to a mass audience. This book explores the nooks and crannies of the pop-music world to unearth lost gems from should-have-been major artists (Nico, Judee Sill), lesser works by established icons (Marvin Gaye’s post-divorce kissoff album, “Here My Dear”; Prince’s post-Warner Bros. work of the’90s), or bands that simply don’t fit into neat categories (the Only Ones, Roky Erickson’s Aliens). The bands are divided into thematic sections, including bubblegum; folk-psych individualists; pop vocal bizarre; punk/new wave; outsider artists; obscurities from the stars; lo-fi/garage rock; roots Americana; and kiddie music. This book will delight any jukebox junkie or pop culture enthusiast.
 
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Kim Cooper and David Smay are founders/coeditors of the fanzine, Scram, which is devoted to pop music obscurities. Scram was an editor’s choice in Factsheet 5 for “unusually great writing” and cited by LA Weekly as a best-of-LA publication. They are coeditors of Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears.
 
Author Tidbits:?!
 
RUSS FORSTER has been involved in unjustly obscure music scenes since the mid-1980s, when he shocked audiences with his Hershey-syrup-branding band FUDGETUNNEL and put out the first Screeching Weasel LP on a tiny record label called UNDERDOG RECORDS. In the 1990s he made two music-related feature-length documentaries: So Wrong They?re Right and Tributary. His rantings and ravings have appeared in zines like Roctober, 8-Track Mind, Go Metric and Scram
 
Jake Austen edits Roctober; the journal of popular music?s dynamic obscurities, and (with wife Jacqueline) produces the children’s dance show Chic-A-Go-Go. His work has appeared in The Cartoon Music Book, Playboy, The Spice Girls Comicbook and Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth. His books include A Friendly Game of Poker and a forthcoming idiosyncratic history of rock on television.
 
Erin McKean is the Editor in Chief of US Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and the editor of the only magazine for word geeks, VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly. She is the author of Weird and Wonderful Words and More Weird and Wonderful Words. She lives in Chicago and cannot remember life before the iPod.