Category: Store Events

  • Danica Novgorodoff signs Slow Storm

    With commanding landscapes and a lyrical rhythm of prose, SLOW STORM is the first full length graphic novel from 2007 Eisner nominee Danica Novgorodoff, and introduces an exciting new talent in comics.

    SLOW STORM tells the emotional story of two individuals brought together by loss and loneliness.  On the day after the Kentucky Derby, tornado season descends on Oldham County.  With yesterday’s results still resonating, lightning strikes and sets a barn ablaze.  In its embers, a poignant but fleeting relationship is kindled between forlorn firefighter Ursa Crain, an out-of-place woman struggling to fit into her small Kentucky community, and Rafi, a Mexican immigrant wondering whether his American dream will ever be fulfilled.

    By turns violent and poetic, magical and mundane, SLOW STORM follows the flight of a young illegal both enchanted and disappointed by America, and a woman with dark clouds looming above and within her.  Their interaction, though passing, evokes powerful imagery of homeland and family, and leaves the reader questioning his own sense of these values.

    This compelling story explores the heart-wrenching struggle of immigration, an outsider’s difficulties to find her place in the world, and the power created when unexpected relationships find us.  SLOW STORM’s poignant themes, accompanied by Novgorodoff’s lush watercolor washes and masterful linework, tell an emotionally-charged tale of homesickness and horses, storms and saints.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Danica Novgorodoff studied painting and photography at Yale University and cowherding in the Andes Mountains.  She has worked as a horse trainer in Virginia, an English teacher in Ecuador, and assistant to photographer Sally Mann, and an artist review writer for galleries in Chelsea and SoHo, New York.  In 2006 she won the Isotope Award for her mini-comic A Late Freeze and in 2007 was nominated for an Eisner Award.  She currently lives in New York City, where she works as a designer for First Second.

  • Bob Calhoun & Floyd Webb at Quimby’s!

    Join us for a night delving into the continuing Count Dante phenomenon. Filmmaker Floyd Webb will discuss his film and the Count Dante legend and then introduce Bob Calhoun, who will read from his punk wrestling memoir and sign copies of his book Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling after a Q&A.

    BOB CALHOUN is the author of Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling. In the mid 1990s, San Francisco rocker Bob Calhoun took the name of Chicago comic book kung fu huckster Count Dante and joined the punk rock wrestling troupe Incredibly Strange Wrestling (ISW). ISW emerged from the back alleys and seedy clubs of San Francisco’s South of Market scene to headline the historic Fillmore and barnstorm North America on the Van’s Warped Tour. At the height of its popularity, Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong and Metallica’s James Hetfield could be seen tossing tortillas (which the promoters supplied) at ringside with the rest of the hell heads, boozehounds and tattooed party girls that made up ISW’s rabid following. It’s a story of urban misfits risking their necks for local celebrity in one of America’s most famous cities all told against the backdrop of the dot com boom and bust and an increasingly corporate entertainment industry.

    FLOYD WEBB: Director and producer of the documentary film “The Search For Count Dante.” From Clarksdale, Mississippi Delta and raised on Chicago’s Southside, Floyd Webb’s background includes global work in cinema, photojournalism, publishing and advertising. He has found all of these experiences useful as a convergent worker, designer and consultant for the Internet.

    After a 10 year career as a photojournalist Floyd was founder and creative director of the Blacklight Festival of International Black Cinema. From 1984-1995 the festival was one of the most critically acclaimed festivals of it’s kind during that period.

    Floyd was an associate producer of the award winning Julie Dash Film, Daughters of the Dust(US 1992), and developed the Geechee Girls Multimedia website in 1995. He works as a consultant in film programming and online issues for The Raindance Festival of Independent Cinema in London and The Black Filmmaker Magazine Film Festival in London.

    http://beerbloodandcornmeal.com

    http://thesearchforcountdante.com

  • Adrienne Pine at Quimby’s!

    Anthropologist Adrienne Pine will present Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras. The event highlights links between Mano Dura and mercenaries, the war on terror, IMF and World Bank policy, the prison-industrial complex, Honduran massacres, gangs, and sweatshop labor

    “Honduras is violent.” Adrienne Pine situates this oft-repeated claim at the center of her vivid and nuanced chronicle of Honduran subjectivity. Through an examination of three major subject areas—violence, alcohol, and the export-processing (maquiladora) industry—Pine explores the daily relationships and routines of urban Hondurans. She views their lives in the context of the vast economic footprint on and ideological domination of the region by the United States, powerfully elucidating the extent of Honduras’s dependence. She provides a historically situated ethnographic analysis of this fraught relationship and the effect it has had on Hondurans’ understanding of who they are. The result is a rich and visceral portrait of a culture buffeted by the forces of globalization and inequality.

    Adrienne Pine is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

    “A theoretically cutting edge ethnography of neoliberalism as suffered by most poor people across the globe. Pine creatively links macro-structural forces in Honduras to the everyday life of factory workers, shanty town dwellers, gang kids, alcoholics and crack smokers within the context of globalized consumerism and the history of U.S. domination of Central America.”—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect

    “Gutsy fieldwork. A compassionate analysis of the links between work, violence, corporate capitalism, American empire, and self-worth. It will make your blood boil.”—Laura Nader, University of California, Berkeley

    “Using largely the voices of others, Pine’s rigorous but sensitive anthropological approach interweaves gangs, work, religion, drink, politics, and even globalization to show clearly how violence pervades the everyday life of many Hondurans. It is a realistic tour de force!”—Dwight B. Heath, Brown University

  • Guild of Outsider Writers at Quimby’s!

    Join us for a reading by three people associated with the Guild of Outsider Writers.

    The Performers:

    Justin Hyde – Author of Down Where the Hummingbird goes to Die, which won the 2007 Jack Micheline Memorial poetry prize

    David Blaine – Chief Poetry editor, Guild of Outsider Writers

    Pat King – Guild of Outsider Writers founding member and Chief Bad Mojo

    More info at: http://www.outsiderwriters.org/

  • Lloyd Dangle at Quimby’s!

    Lloyd Dangle will perform his 20 Years of Troubletown humorous slide show floor show and sign copies of his book Troubletown Told You So, Comics that Could’ve Saved Us From This Mess.

    Troubletown, by Lloyd Dangle, was first published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1988 and has since grown to become a widely syndicated cartoon feature in alternative newsweeklies and lefty political magazines.

    Lloyd’s cartoons and illustrations have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type from the crusty corporate mainstream to the bleeding, subcommercial edge. Lloyd’s work has been featured in publications including American Lawyer, Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, Shape, Sierra, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New York Times, Outside, Time Magazine, Utne Reader, Village Voice and Wired. His drawings also adorn the packaging of Airborne effervescent cold remedy, which the company claims has been one fastest-selling products in retail history.

    Lloyd was also the first cartoonist assigned to cover the Republican National Convention in New York City armed with nothing but a pen and a blank sketchbook, the resulting cartoon was selected for Houghton-Mifflin’s series, The Best American Comics. When not on the road covering bizarre and dangerous political events, he works out of his converted garage in Oakland, California.

    Lloyd Dangle grew up in Michigan and, after getting a BFA from the University of Michigan School of Art, tossed it all out the window to draw cartoons for Michael Moore’s (much praised and reviled) muckraking newspaper, the Michigan Voice. He moved to New York City during the go-go 80’s and worked for several magazines and newspapers, including the Village Voice when it was still at the height of its powers. He landed a cartoon feature at upscale Manhattan, Inc. Magazine, lampooning the high-living antics of Wall Street’s youthful elite (some things are timeless). After landlord larceny caused Dangle’s apartment building to collapse (literally), he moved to San Francisco and secured his well-earned underground hipster cred, roaming the Mission District, and befriending Robert and Aline Crumb, appearing in their classic depressive übercomic, Weirdo.

    He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, Hae Yuon Kim, and their son, Oscar.

  • DR. REVOLT and Gary Panter

    DR. REVOLT and Gary Panter Appearance and signing of The Lost Ones

    Steve Niles teams up with four visual artists to bring you a graphic novel that will challenge what you think about time and space travel. DR. REVOLT, an original member of the historic New York City graffiti crew The Rolling Thunder Writers, Gary Panter, an illustrator known for his surreal and raw style, Morning Breath, Brooklyn-based art and design duo, and emerging painter/fashion designer Kime Buzzelli – each bring a remarkable and unique drawing style to the project.

    “The Lost Ones” tells the story of Duncan, Roxy, Rasheed and Cynthia, who leave their Earth and get swept up in an epic intergalactic adventure. What starts out as a harmless day of extreme planet jumping turns into a mind-blowing, white-knuckle race for their lives to get back home. Collector’s and paperback editions of “The Lost Ones” will be available for free in early July 2008 at select comic book stores nationwide.

  • Orphan Schlitz III at Quimby’s!

    Join Quimby’s for the Orphan Schlitz Reading Series III hosted by Marc Arcuri. Performers will read short stories and poetry.

    With:

    Marc Arcuri-SlopArtist, Musician, Fashion Editor, Hipster, Degenerate, Entertainer

    Dan Gleason-Writer, Artist, Renegade

    Ted McClelland-Author of book HORSEPLAYERS: LIFE AT THE TRACK

  • Stephanie Kuehnert at Quimby’s!

    The Literary Writer’s Network presents a reading for debut novelist Stephanie Kuehnert, reading from her book I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. A Q&A and book signing will follow the reading.

    STEPHANIE KUEHNERT got her start writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several D.I.Y. feminist zines. Stephanie received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. She currently resides in Forest Park, IL. This novel is her first. Visit her website at www.stephaniekuehnert.com.

    I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone is a raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell.

    The Clash. Social Distortion. Dead Kennedys. Patti Smith. The Ramones.
    Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back.

    Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

    About the Literary Writer’s Network:
    LWN is an organization dedicated to literary excellence through the advancement and promotion of emerging and creative non-fiction writers. LWN seeks to help writers understand the literary publishing landscape, offers them a community with other writers and provides them with opportunities to further develop and refine their artistry.  LWN is dedicated specifically to the art of literary prose and offers a bimonthly writing groups and quarterly reading series. We also publish the literary magazine 10,000 Tons of Black Ink that strives to give new and burgeoning literary artists a forum for quality publication.

  • Erick Lyle a.k.a Iggy Scam at Quimby’s!

    “Forget the statistics and pretentious analysis of urban society. Take a walk through the city with Erick Lyle and discover the reality of how people live in an American city.” — Howard Zinn

    “Erick Lyle’s SCAM: MY favorite zine of all-time” — Pete the Dishwasher

    Join Erick Lyle as he reads from his new book On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City.

    On the Lower Frequencies is at once a manual, memoir, and history of creative resistance in a world awash with war and poverty.  With these tales of squatting the ruins of the dot-com era, playing hit-and-run punk shows in the streets and organizing neighborhood anti-war parades, the editor of the underground classic SCAM magazine, Erick Lyle, traces not only the evolution of cities, but of his own thinking — and in so doing, gives the reader inspiration for living defiantly.

    Erick Lyle, once upon a time known as Iggy Scam, has been editing SCAM magazine and traveling around the nation in various bands since 1991.  Lyle will be playing in Chicago a few days before with his band BLACK RAINBOW at the Mauled By Tigers fest.

  • Ryan Claytor at Quimby’s!

    COMIC BOOK ARTIST TURNS CROSS-COUNTRY MOVE INTO CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR

    Starting July 2008, recent Master of Fine Arts graduate and Autobiographical Cartoonist, Ryan Claytor, will begin a comic book signing tour to promote the release of his self-published master’s thesis on autobiographical comics.  Claytor says, “I finished school, my girlfriend got a great job out of state (and was able to swing me a partner hire), and I have a new book coming out.  It all seemed to come together serendipitously.”

    Claytor is most well-known for publishing his all-ages autobiographical comic book series entitled, “And Then One Day” under the moniker, “Elephant Eater Comics.”  Claytor recently announced the final line-up for his ambitious North American Comic Book Tour, which will take him to 17 different locations in 10 states on his way from California to his new home in Lansing, MI.

    It is an odd choice to move from California to Michigan.  Aside from the new job and a significant other, when asked about some benefits of moving to the mid-west from the west coast, he simply stated, “I am a very sweaty fellow.  My hands are like waterfalls.  I think the cold weather might make me function like a normal human being.”

    Claytor will be getting to all of the stops on his tour in his little brown car he affectionately calls “Squirrelly,” which incidentally has 350,000 miles on its original engine.  When asked about the feasibility of a North American tour in such an experienced car, Claytor replied, “I know it sounds silly to take this large of a trip in such a ‘seasoned’ vehicle, but it’s been really good to me and I’ve asked several mechanics to make sure it could survive a cross-country road trip.  They’re all surprised it looks as good as it does.”

    You can meet Ryan Claytor in person as he comes through town to sign his autobiographical comics and limited edition prints at Quimby’s
    Additional tour and book information can be found at Ryan Claytor’s website: www.ElephantEater.com