Category: Store Events

Comics artist Paul Hornschemeier, the author of Mother Come Home,
celebrates the release of Forlorn Funnies #5 with animated videos at Quimby?s.
Friday March 19th 8PM
 
Paul Hornschemeier is the creator of the Harvey, Ignatz, and Eisner nominated Forlorn Funnies, as well as the recently published “Mother, Come Home” collection from Dark Horse. Reared in a small farming town in southern Ohio, Paul now lives and works in Chicago. His work has also appeared in the Chicago Reader, Alarm, Sound Collector Audio Review, Friction, The Common Review, Project Telstar, Autobiographix, as well as various CD and 7″ covers and posters.
 
For this event there will be a showing of short animated videos based on Paul’s cartoons, followed by a brief question and answer session. The event will conclude with Paul signing his collection, Mother, Come Home, as well as the new 80-page Forlorn Funnies 5, which makes its debut at the beginning of March.

Soft Skull & FC2 authors read Thursday March 25th 7:30PM
 
An evening of readings featuring:Ben Greenman, Daniel Nester and Clayton Eshleman & FC2 Authors
further details tba
 
Soft Skull Authors:
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker; his work has appeared there as well as in Nerve, McSweeneys, The Paris Review, Mississippi Review, Elysian Fields, and elsewhere. Most recently his work appeared in the acclaimed McAdam/Cage anthology Politically Inspired. He has ghostwritten for Gene Simmons and Simon Cowell, amongst others, and once won a car in a rock ?n? roll trivia bowl. Born in Chicago, he grew up in Florida and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
 
Daniel Nester is a poet, editor, and teacher who lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in such journals as Open City, Nerve, Mississippi Review, and in The Best American Poetry2003. He is the editor in chief of the online literary journal Unpleasant Event Schedule , former editor in chief of La Petite Zine, and contributing editor of Painted Bride Quarterly.
 
Clayton Eshleman:
 
FC2 Authors:
Brian Evenson is the author of six books of fiction, most recently The Wavering Knife. He teaches Creative Writing at Brown University. He will be reading from “The Installation.”
 
Lucy Corin’s short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and Fiction International, and in anthologies such as New Stories from the South: The Year’s
Best and FC2’s Chick-Lit2 (No Chic Vics). She will be reading from her first novel, Everyday
Psychokillers: A History for Girls.
 
A.B. West lives in Belgium, where she has worked with the avant-garde theater company, Th??tre Laboratoire Vicinal. She performed and collaborated on the original plays Tramp, Lunapark and Chaman Hooligan. She was the director and sole actress of the play “I” which toured worldwide. West has also been an agent, an editor with Wall Street Journal Europe, a free-lance translator and a copywriter. Wakenight Emporium has been accepted for publication in France as Figurations Lumi?res. She will be reading from Wakenight Emporium.
 
more info at http://fc2.org

Akashic authors Robert Arellano & Shawn Shiflett read from their new books Don Dimaio of La Plata & Hidden PlaceMonday March 22nd 7PM
 
Robert Arellano is the author of Don Dimaio of La Plata Roberto Bobby Arellano De Nueva Jersey taught creative writing at Brown University and is the author of Fast Eddie: King of the Bees. His short fiction has appeared in the Kenyon Review and Jane. As an indie musician, Arellano has performed with Will Oldham, Havanarama, and Nick Cave.
 
Shawn Shiflett is the author of Hidden Place He is a professor in the Fiction Writing department at Columbia College Chicago. He is working on a second novel Hey, Liberal about a white boy in a predominantly African-American high school one year after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Shiflett was born and raised in Chicago, and currently lives in La Grange, Illinois with his wife and two children.
 
Don Dimaio of La Plata, a selection of the Akashic Urban Surreal series, is Robert Arellano\’s wickedly funny novel about the adventures of a high-flying American mayor who\’s always pimping the keys to his city with a bribe in his pocket, a straw up his nose, and an ape who’s just escaped from the zoo on his tail. Between grand openings and ribbon-cuttings, a trusty trooper named Pancho Sanchez muscles the black limo with numero-uno license plate through traffic while in back Mayor Don “PALLY” Dimaio (bearing a remarkable resemblance to former Providence, RI mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci who is currently serving a five-year sentence in federal prison for racketeering and corruption) swigs cognac from a flask, exposes his privates (which he nicknames “Rock Sinatra”), and holds strategy meetings with strippers from the Crafty Beaver. No matter how naughty his behavior or tacky his toupees, the people of La Plata can’t get enough of Donald “Pally” Dimaio and the jars of sauce, “Dimaio’s Own Mayonnaise,” he hawks at every fundraiser.
 
HIDDEN PLACE is Shiflett\’s suspenseful and provocative literary debut, set in Chicago and Puerto Escondido, a small Mexican beach town 150 miles south of Acapulco. Told in a strong vernacular voice, the story focuses on six major characters, all of them highly flawed and uncomfortably real. The narrator, Roman Pearson, and his girlfriend, Mila Popovic, take a vacation together to Escondido in the hopes of patching up their deteriorating relationship.
 
Both authors will read and sign copies of thier new books

Robert Newman reads and signs Fountain at the Center of the World Friday March 12th 8PM
 
A stand-up comedian for sixteen years, Newman headed the first comedy act ever to play the 12,000 seat Wembley Arena, making front page news. The late Bill Hicks asked to be his tour support, and Newman performed alongside Michael Moore in London’s biggest anti-war benefit gig. He has just completed a twelve month sell-out tour of his historico-political stand-up show From Caliban to Taliban?500 Years of Humanitarian Intervention. Newman has been politically active with Reclaim The Streets, the Liverpool Dockers, Indymedia, Earth First and People’s Global Action. In the last month he gave the keynote speech at the People & Planet conference and has been a guest speaker of the New Economics Foundation.
 
The Fountain At The Center Of The World is Newman’s third novel, but first to be published in the U.S. The writing of The Fountain At The Center Of The World was the subject of a BBC film shown on national television in Britain, Australia and parts of Europe. Research for the novel took him onto Welsh trawlers, into refugee detention centers and tropical disease hospitals. He also learned Spanish and traveled extensively through Mexico and Central America. Released October 1st in the UK, The Fountain At The Centre Of The World is already in its second printing.
 
\”It’s like bootleg Chomsky The Fountain at the Centre of the World is a serious and intelligent book. It’s a novel that confronts everything that is wrong with the world and demands that which is right, and it therefore makes a lot of British fiction seem rather tender-minded in comparison.”The Guardian
 
more info at www.robnewman.com

Saturday March 13th 2PM
 
Join us in celebrating the publication of the literary magazines, Pigeon & Bluewith readings from contributing authors: Joe Meno, Deb Lewis, Amanda Snyder. Elizabeth Yokas, Chris Maul Rice & Antonia Logue
 
Pigeon is a literary journal featuring fiction, essays, poetry, and nonfiction. Its mission is to provide a forum for writers to showcase their excellent work, and to discover who’s out there writing what. It has no themes, no topics, no word count. This no-restrictions format allows Pigeon to fill its pages with a wide range of work and a wealth of voices.
 
Blue is dedicated to publishing works by, for, and about the working class. It fills an unnecessary void in the publishing world – championing voices and subject matter that is often overlooked in the literary mainstream.
 
Joe Meno’s two novels are Tender as Hellfire and How the Hula Girl Sings. His third novel, Hairstyles of the Damned will be released this summer through Punk Planet books. He teaches creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.
 
Deb Lewis earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College and holds a Director’s Certificate from the Story Workshop Institute. Her writing has appeared in Dyversity, International Drummer, Bad Attitude, Sleepwalk, and many other publications. She teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago and has recently finished a novel.
 
Amanda Snyder is a graduate student in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago and also a freelance writer for metromix.com. Her work has appeared in Blue, Hair Trigger, and GenX Webzine.
 
Elizabeth Yokas is an adjunct faculty member in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, and a graduate of its MFA program. Her work has appeared in Sleepwalk, Hair Trigger 17-19, Glasshouse, the Tap and many others.
 
Chris Maul Rice’s short stories have appeared in Hair Trigger and Emergence. Her feature stories appear regularly in Chicago Tribune’s Health and Family section and Gravity magazine. She wrote for Detroit’s MetroTimes newspaper and MetroParent magazine, where one of her articles prompted a Justice Department investigation.
 
Antonia Logue published her first novel, Shadow-Box at the age of twenty-six. The book won the Irish Times Literature Prize and placed her on the London Observer’s Twenty-One Writers for the Twenty-First Century list. Born in County Derry, Ireland and educated at Trinity College in Dublin, she has been a freelance journalist and literary critic for such publications as the Guardian, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Irish Times, and more. She currently teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.
 
More info can be found at www.pigeonmagazine.com

Saturday April 10th 2PM at Quimbys
Rich Mackin of Book of letters, Dear Mr. Mackin, and Thank You For Your Continued Interest along with Blair Vail, a blues and jazz inspired singer, songwriter & poet. Will Perform.
 
Rich Mackin has been harassing corporate America for over a decade now with his ongoing letter writing campaigns that he reads from as “Consumer Defense Corporate Poetry”. He returns to Quimby’s with his latest collections of letters, including the Gorsky Press trade paperback, Thank You For Your Continued Interest and the 18th issue of his acclaimed zine, Book of Letters. See what happens when Rich tells McDonalds to die, hear Rich ask George W about beef jerky, and marvel at Starbucks haiku. Rich will also tell stories about cross-country travels and the drama of this past year.
 
Blair Vail is a blues and jazz inspired singer/songwriter/poet. Born and raised in Rochester, NY and now residing in Portland, OR, she has performed at a host of poetry and music venues, cafes and pizza parlors as a spoken word poet, solo performer and member of the experimental poetry band, Dream Engine. This tour coincides with the release of her new CD, Entanglements and Disconnections, which expands on ideas touched upon in her 2001 album, Voice. She joins Rich Mackin on a tour of zinedom with a new chapbook of her poetry.
 
www.richmackin.org

A Reading of tales filled with hope, despair, agony, real human emotion, and words, brought to you by Gregory Jacobsen, Patrick Bertram, and Daniel Gleason.
Thursday February 26th 8:00PM
 
This is your chance to meet three of Alexandre Dumas’s most valued ghost writers during the period in which he ‘wrote’ Count of Monte Christo, and more importantly, Le Chevalier De Maison-Rouge. Come hear them read stories they did not totally get screwed out of credit for on this magical night. And please-remember to wear your most frilly 19th Century garb!
 
Gregory Jacobsen paints pictures. He performs in a band called “Lovely Little Girls.” He cuts up pulp novels, cookbooks, encyclopedias, and medical books to write his concrete prose.
 
Patrick Bertram is a local resident. He is moving though, and would like to spend more quality time with his friend Dan, so he is glad to be here. May your time here tonight refresh you.
 
Dan Gleason writes incessantly because no one will talk to him. He is a scotch guard huffer. He sells 9 books at Quimby’s because it makes him feel like ‘a somebody.’ Dan is currently in his house nursing a large boil under is right ear lobe.

Sex Crimes reading with Lawrence Santoro and Wayne Allen Sallee
Friday January 9th 7PM
 
Sex Crimes, the latest title from Chanting Monks Press (this in tandem with Boneyard
Press) has been released and hits with all the impact of a kidney punch delivered by a Chicago hit man wearing brass knuckles. Featuring 15 tales by denizens of the fiction world\’s seedy underbelly, this anthology is packed with stories no other publishers wanted: orphans, the editors refer to them as, and all the stragglers in this orphanage have been abused.
 
Sex Crimes contains fiction by the likes of: David J. Schow (The Crow, LEATHERFACE: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, Red Nails), Wayne Allen Sallee (For You, the Living, Bumpyface, Year’s Best Horror and Sci Fi), Christa Faust (Hot Blood, Control Freak), Hart D. Fisher (Poems for the Dead, The Garbage Man), Joseph M. Monks (The Night Terrors, Stuff Out’a My Head, Cry For Dawn), Stephen Elliott (Jones Inn, Politically Inspired, What It Means to Love You), Stephen Bissette (Taboo, Swamp Thing) and others. Among the illustrators providing the graphic backbone for the tales are: Frank Forte (The Vampire Verses), Stephen Bissette, John Cassaday (Captain America, Dark Angel), James Helkowski (LEGION), Bryan Baugh (The Jackie Chan Hour, Agony in Black) and horror legend Bernie Wrightson (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Callah, Creepshow, Heavy Metal, The Stand) and others.
 
15 tales dealing with the topic of sex and crime with no boundaries, no holds barred, and no pulled punches. Stories other anthologies and publishers were afraid to publish.
 
Local authors Lawrence Santoro and Wayne Allen Sallee will be reading and signing copies of Sex Crimes
 
For more info see www.chantingmonks.com

Monday April 5th 6PM
 
Scott Mills is the Eisner and Harvey award nominated creator of the graphic
novels BIG CLAY POT, TRENCHES, MY OWN LITTLE EMPIRE, ZEBEDIAH THE HILLBILLY ZOMBIE REDNECK BITES THE DUST, and THE MASTERPLAN. He won the Ignatz award for Outstanding Story for the book TRENCHES and the Xeric award for the mini-comic CELLS. He is currently at work on the anthology series SEAMONSTERS & SUPERHEROES for Slave Labor Graphics, and the syndicated strip PIPE DREAMS.”
 
He will be on hand to sign his comics and maybe other people’s too if you make him.
 
For more info: www.scottmills.net

Saturday Feb. 21st
5:00 PM
 
Roosevelt University’s Oyez Review is dedicated to bringing you the quality prose, poetry and art you need to get you through your day. It’s delicious and nutritous, tastes just like chicken. This will be an event to celebrate the new issue.
 
Featuring:
 
Robert Vivian who’s first book, Cold Snap As Yearning, was published by the Univ. of Nebraska Press. His essays and poems have appeared in Harper’s, New York Quarterly, Georgia Review and others. He teaches English at Alma College in Michigan.
 
Michael Brownstein is an elementary school science teacher in the Chicago public schools. His work has appeared in The Cafe Review, Kings Estate Press, Ariel and others. Awards include, The Ommation Press Best Chapbook and the Triton College International Poetry Prize. He currently writes for The Southstreet Journal.
 
and photographer Stephanie Dean