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Dan Berger author ofOutlaws of America readsSaturday, June 3rd, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Outlaws of America brings to life America\’s most famous renegades, the Weather Underground. Based on detailed and original research, it is a gripping account of the actions and motivations of the group of white people who risked everything to oppose war and racism. At the same time, it provides a nuanced and critically engaged study demostrating the Weather Underground\’s contemporary significance.
 
This engaging, and timely book tells the untold story of the Weather Underground, from its incendiary beginnings to its tumultuous end. In an unsparing critical analysis, Berger uses dozens of in-depth interviews with former Weather Underground members and other long-time activists to trace the group\’s evolution in relation to the civil rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements. From the Students for a Democratic Society of the 1960s through the political trials of the 1980s, Outlaws of America is a history of the Weather Underground that clearly resonates today. It is essential reading for students, activists, and anyone concerned about both the state of the world and what to do about it.
 
Dan Berger is a 24-year-old writer, activist, and graduate student living in Philadelphia. He is the author of Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (AK Press, 2006) and co-editor of Letters From Young Activists: Today\’s Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books, 2005).
 
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Berger has been involved with an array of anti-racist and global justice organizing projects. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of Resistance in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Z, Socialism and Democracy, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among elsewhere.

Mykel Board readsFriday, May 26th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
About Even a Daughter is Better
This is the true story of Mykel Board\’s journey into Outer Mongolia. Part black comedy, part travelogue, part memoir, Even A Daughter Is Better Than Nothing (the title is taken from a Mongolian proverb) recounts, among other things, a year of: teaching English at the National University in Ulaanbaatar, getting lost in the Gobi Desert, meeting the only rock band in Mongolia, having dinner with an arms dealer in China, sparring with Mongolian pro-wrestlers, witnessing a bizarre visit by Hillary Clinton and ritual sheep slaughter.
 
About I A, Meist (or The Portable Board)
The first compilation of the legendary Maximum Rock \’N\’ Rollcolumns. Fifty-three columns from 1985 to 2000. A huge, healthy dose of the caustic wit, provocative insights, and literary genius that has kept Mr. B as the longest running reason folks continue to pick up that venerable bible of the international underground punk community.
 
Mykel Board has written dozens of freelance articles and seventeen novels under pseudonyms. Maximum Rock\’n\’Roll has been printing his column for more than 20 years. His essays have appeared in several anthologies including Bisexual Politics, Hayworth Press and Good Advice for Young People, Last Gasp Press.

Jason Ockert author of Rabbit PunchesMonday, May 15th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Jason Ockert?s debut collection of demented Southern short stories is titled, Rabbit Punches. George Saunders has said, “Rabbit Punches marks the debut of an exciting new American talent.?; and Padgett Powell has said, “The writing is hip but not terminally hip, fun, at times very fun, and contains signs that the author is disturbed enough to be worth watching. He may tell us some new things.”
 
Jason Ockert was the 1999 winner of the Atlantic Monthly Fiction Contest and the 2002 Mary Roberts Rinehart National Fiction Award. His stories have appeared in Virgin Fiction 2, McSweeney?s, River City, CutBank, Oyster Boy Review, Black Warrior Review, and are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review. He teaches writing at Ithaca College.
 
More info: http://www.lofipress.com/rpunches.asp

Saturday, 20 May 2006
THE2NDHAND #20 release party
7:30 PM
 
THE2NDHAND\’s broadsheet installment #20 is Austin writer Lauren
Trojniar\’s \”This Is How You Paint a House,\” a tale of the giddy, drunken
moral collapse of a suburban couple and a sometime housepainter.
Trojniar, a preschool teacher by day, makes the trek to Chicago for this
reading, at which she\’ll be joined by THE2NDHAND contributors Susannah
Felts and Gretchen Kalwinski and editor Todd Dills, who plays host.
 
Lauren Trojniar is the author of THE2NDHAND\’s 20th Installment, \”This Is
How You Paint a House,\” the story of Greg and Moira, a suburban couple
loosed from the strains of rearing children and attending yoga classes
by the introduction into their lives of one housepainter, Tomas, a
Dominican immigrant who shares with Greg a taste for whiskey. Trojniar
teaches preschool in Austin, TX, where she also lives.
 
Susannah Felts is on the faculty of SAIC\’s creative writing department,
and she\’s a frequent contributor to the /Chicago Reader/, among other
publications.
 
Gretchen Kalwinski lives and writes in Chicago. Lately, her
journalistic work has appeared, in addition to her fiction being
featured at THE2NDHAND.com, in /Venus/ and a host of other publications.
 
Todd Dills is the editor of THE2NDHAND. His first novel, Sons of the
Rapture, is due out August/September from Chicago publishers Featherproof.

Michelle Tea EventMay 25th 7PMfree
 
About Rose of No Man?s Land
Fourteen-year-old Trisha Driscoll is a hungry machine, taking in her hometown of Mogsfield, Massachusetts ? a place that has shamelessly surrendered to neon signs, theme restaurants, and cookie-cutter chain stores. Cynical but naive, Trisha observes the disappointing world from the ignored perspective of a teenager: creepy guys, the unfathomable sadness of the elderly, illegal tattoos, and the wild kingdom of mall culture.
 
After being hired and abruptly fired from the most popular shop at the absurd and kaleidoscopic Square One Mall, Trisha finds herself linked up with a chain-smoking, physically stunted mall rat named Rose, and her life shifts into manic overdrive.
 
A whirlwind exploration of poverty and dropouts, Rose of No Man?s Land is the world according to Trisha ? a furious love story between two weirdo girls, brimming with snarky observations and soulful wonderings on the dazzle-flash emptiness of contemporary culture.
 
Michelle Tea is the author of four memoirs, including the Lambda-award winning Valencia and the illustrated Rent Girl, which is currently being developed for television. Tea is the founder of the notorious all-girl performance tour Sister Spit, which wrecked poetic havoc across the USA at the end of the last century. She continues to curate literary events nationally, and hosts and cookie-baker for the monthly Radar Reading Series at the San Francisco Public Library. Rose of No Man?s Land is her first novel.

Book Signing withTony Fitzpatrickfor the new bookThe Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 2, The Dream CityThursday May 18th 7:30PM
FREE
 
The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 2, is 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. The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 2, The Dream City, is the newest collection in a three-part series of drawing-collages books.
 
Tony Fitzpatrick will be signing copies of his book at this event.
http://www.tonyfitzpatrick.com

Noah Berlatsky zine readingMonday, April 17th7:00 PMFREE
 
Chicago Reader contributer Noah Berlatsky will read from two new zines: “George Washington In His Last Illness” and “Piaget and Demigods”. Both publications wrestle upwind from fundamental issues: What would Quetzlcoatl do? Who controls lightning better, Ben Franklin or Thor? Why doesn’t Moby just shut up already? Enlightenment will ricochet like sentient bowel movements if you but attend Quimby’s, plus some pizza too.
 
Noah Berlatsky is also creator of zines such as “Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Blackbird” and “Angry White Clerihew”.

Josh Frank author of Fool the World
(an oral history of a band called the pixies)Tuesday, May 16th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
During their initial seven-year career, Pixies would play some of Europe\’s most gigantic festivals, keep the press guessing, and cultivate a fervid international fan base hungry for more and more of their unique surf punk. The band worked fast, cranking out four albums at a breakneck pace, but ultimately the pressures of the road and personality clashes took their toll: Pixies broke up just as bands like Nirvana were singing their praises as the rock\’n\’roll innovators. For twelve years a Pixies reunion seemed impossible, but a sudden announcement in 2004 proclaimed the unthinkable – Pixies were getting back together. Their extremely successful reunion tour finally gave the group something they\’d always lacked in their homeland: proof that their bone-rattling music had left an indelible impact.
 
Fool the World tells Pixies\’ story in the words of those who lived it, from the band members to studio owners, from A&R executives, producers, and visual artists who worked with them to admirers of their music, such as Bono, PJ Harvey, Beck, and Perry Farrell. With new cartoons by Trompe Le Monde illustrator Steve Appleby and prints by Simon Larbalestier (photographer of all Pixies covers) Fool the World is a complete journey through the life, death, and rebirth of one of the most influential bands of all time.
 
Fool The World was written in dialogue from the band own words and the words of those who knew them best. Since Josh Frank came from a theatrical background instead of just reading segments on his own, he will bring together a number of talented actors to each read different characters from the book at this event.
 
Josh Frank is a pop culture dramatist. A director, producer and writer of plays, films, and books, he currently has a number of projects in development and is spending much of his time waiting for his dog to tell him who and what his next book should be about. He is thirty years old and lives in a state of mind somewhere between Austin, Texas and New York City.

Twilight Tales EventSaturday, April 29th, 4:00 PMfree
With Featured Performers:
 
Martin Mundt the author of “The Crawling Abattoir” and numerous short stories. “The work of newcomer Martin Mundt is sick, insane, surreal, and thoroughly enjoyable. I’m looking forward to more.” ? F. Paul Wilson, author of The Keep and Deep As The Marrow
 
John Weagley is the author of ” The Undertow of Small Town Dreams” and editor of numerous anthologies. He’s a member of the Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America and a founding member of Iguana Productions. He lives in Chicago with his two cats, Buster and Lolita.
 
John Everson is winner of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for first novel, “Covenant.” Signing
 
Founded in 1993 by award-winning novelist Tina Jens as a weekly fiction reading series, Twilight Tales has brought hundreds of authors from Chicago and around the world to perform their stories live before an audience. More than a decade later, weekly shows are still held every Monday night upstairs at the Red Lion Restaurant & Pub 2446 N. Lincoln Ave. across the street from the Biograph Theater.
 
Early in its life, Twilight Tales branched out and began collecting the fiction of many of its readers in a series of “sherbet” colored chapbooks. In recent years, the publishing arm of Twilight Tales has moved into producing professional trade paperback anthologies and single author collections.
 
Twilight Tales readers and anthology contributors have included visiting best-selling authors like Max Allan Collins, Barbara D’Amato, Brian Lumley, Yvonne Navarro, Karen Taylor, Melanie Tem and Gahan Wilson, as well as nationally known local novelists like Robert Weinberg, Gene Wolfe, Algis Budrys, Jay Bonansinga, and many more. The books are available at all Twilight Tales shows, as well as at a variety of bookstores, book and art fairs and genre fiction fandom conventions throughout the year. Over the past several years, Twilight Tales has also featured local, domestic and international authors’ fiction as a part of its web site. Twilight Tales is a volunteer-run venture, and many Chicago area authors and fiction-lovers have contributed to its success over the years.

Handmade Electronic Music Workshop and lecture with author Nicolas CollinsSaturday, May 13th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking provides a long-needed, practical, and engaging introduction for students of electronic music, installation and sound-art to the craft of making ? as well as creatively cannibalizing ? electronic circuits for artistic purposes. Designed for practioners and students of electronic art, it provides a guided tour through the world of electronics, encouraging artists to get to know the inner workings of basic electronic devices so they can creatively use them for their own ends. Handmade Electronic Music introduces the basic of practical circuitry while along the way instructing the student in basic electronic principles from the practical point of view of an artist. It teaches a style of intuitive and sensual experimentation that has been lost in this day of prefabricated electronic musical instruments whose inner workings are not open to experimentation. It encourages artists to transcend their fear of electronic technology to launch themselves into the pleasure of working creatively with all kinds of analog circuitry.
 
Nicolas Collins, an active composer and performer of electronic music, is a Professor of Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has led Hacking workshops around the world, from Beijing to Brussels, and has worked with John Cage, Alvin Lucier, David Tudor, and many other masters of modern music.
 
Additional information can be found at www.nicolascollins.com