Blog

  • THE2NDHAND #22 Release Event

    THE2NDHAND #22 Release EventFriday, November 10th, 7:00 PM
     
    THE2NDHAND #22 brings Louisville to Chicago with another in Mickey Hess\’s textual sampling series. The story here integrates the journeys of George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville and brother to the Clark of Lewis & Clark fame, who famously turned down the commission to explore the west in favor of settling in the Ohio river\’s jewel. This crew is all-Louisville, all the time, though we welcome them. Featuring readings from Jason Jordan, Mickey Hess, Jessica Elliott, Mike Smith and Al Burian (not form Louisville).
     
    Jason Jordan is a Louisville-area native and frequent contributor to THE2NDHAND. He is the author of the Powering the Devil\’s Circus, a collection of shorts.
     
    Mickey Hess is THE2NDHAND\’s FAQ editor and and author of the autobiographical novel Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, the experimental collection One Thousand Pound Locket, and a new two-story offering, Someone Has Plagiarized Faulkner. He recently relocated from Louisville to Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where he\’s on the faculty of Rider University. He also edited Greenwood Press\’s forthcoming Icons of Hip-Hop.
     
    Jessica Elliott is a freelance writer and a student at Indiana University Southeast, where she is editor of the Undergraduate Research Journal and associate editor of the IUS Review. Her fiction has appeared in the THE2NDHAND.
     
    Mike Smith is the author of Tell Christian I\’m Sorry and a contributor to THE2NDHAND.
     
    Al Burian is a musican, writer, and zine maker (Burn Collector).

  • Featherproof mini-book launch party

    Saturday, November 4th, 7:30 PM
    Featherproof mini-book launch party
    Join us for an evening of readings with: Patrick Somerville, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Pete Coco, Jeb Gleason-Allured & Kyle Beachy.
     
    Patrick Somerville is a Green Bay native, New York-educated, Chicago-residing writer of fine short fiction. His new short story collection, Trouble, has received warm reviews from smart people.
     
    Anne Elizabeth Moore does a million things, including serving as associate publisher of Punk Planet Magazine and editing the Best American Comics series.
     
    Pete Coco\’s short fiction has appeared in numerous places, including in Featherproof\’s mini-book series and THE2NDHAND. He once was called the Glen Danzig of fiction, and it was meant as a compliment.
     
    Jeb Gleason-Allured online submissions editor at THE2NDHAND; his stories have been published in numerous magazines. He lives and writes and drinks in Chicago.
     
    Kyle Beachy is a local author
     

  • David Greenberger of Duplex Planet 4:30 PM

    For 27 years, David Greenberger has filled his zine, Duplex Planet, with the
    insights, anecdotes and information gleaned from conversations with the
    residents of nursing homes, meal sites and other elder-care facilities. In
    1979, Greenberger landed a job as activities director at the Duplex Nursing Home in Boston, where he started publishing Duplex Planet. The stories, quips, the voices, the characters of senior citizens are elicited and shaped by Greenberger with questions such as \”What was the worst job you ever had,\” or \”How close can you get to a penguin?\” Duplex Planet is also now available in a wider variety of formats in addition to the zine, such as booklength compilations, independent comic books and CDs.
     
    Quimby?s is proud to host Mr. Greenberger. He will read Halloween stories from his zine. For more info, see www.duplexplanet.com .

  • Marjane Satrapi acclaimed author of Persepolis signs her new book Chicken with Plums

    Marjane SatrapiSaturday October 28th 7PMfree
     
    In her acclaimed Persepolis books and in Embroideries, Marjane Satrapi rendered the events of her life and times in a uniquely captivating and powerful voice and vision. Now in Chicken with Plums she turns that same keen eye and ear to the heartrending story of her great-uncle, a celebrated Iranian musician who gave up his life for music and love.
     
    We are in Tehran in 1958, and Nasser Ali Khan, one of Iran?s most revered tar players, discovers that his beloved instrument is irreparably damaged. Though he tries, he cannot find one to replace it, one whose sound speaks to him with the same power and passion with which his music speaks to others. In despair, he takes to his bed, renouncing the world and all its pleasures, closing the door on the demands and love of his wife and his four children. Over the course of the week that follows, his family and close friends attempt to change his mind, but Nasser Ali slips further and further into his own reveries: flashbacks and flash-forwards (with unexpected appearances by the likes of the Angel of Death and Sophia Loren) from his own childhood through his children?s futures. And as the pieces of his story slowly fall into place, we begin to understand the profundity of his decision to give up life.
     
    Marjane Satrapi brings what has become her signature humor, insight, and generosity to this emotional tale of life and death, and the courage and passion both require of us. The poignant story of one man, it is also a story of stunning universality?and an altogether luminous work.
     
    Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the Lycee Francais before leaving for Vienna and then going to Strasbourg to study illustration. She currently lives in Paris, where she is at work on the sequel to Persepolis and where her illustrations appear regularly in newspapers and magazines. She is also the author of several children’s books.

  • Chicago Calling Event

    Chicago Calling Event Wednesday October 25th 8PM
    With Mars Gamba-Adissa Caulton, Pamela Osbey, Xianggang Delight
     
    This event will combine poetry readings and music, with a focus on the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina. This event will be part of Chicago Calling: A 24-Hour Arts Festival. For more info, please see www.chicagocalling.org.
     
    Mars Gamba-Adissa Caulton hit the open mic poetry scene in Chicago in the early 90’s, reading mangled manifestos and timid tirades at Anotha Level @ Lit X, the weekly gathering in the basement with the leaky toilet and the best performance poets in town working out their craft. Having been a political activist since 1983, Mars quickly learned the true power of the Spoken Word: to Teach, to Unite, to Inspire and to Incite.
     
    Pamela Osbey is an accomplished vocalist, poet, and freelance writer. She is a powerful spoken word artist with a mission to uplift and empower women and people of color. She has appeared in well-read texts, such as sisterfriends.com, Ebonylove.net, Rhapsody Publishing, The Nubian Chronicles, and the Daughters of Eve Network.
     
    Xianggang Delight is a Chicago-based musical group that has been performing regularly since summer 2001. Their aim is to synthesize the following two elements: the post-global economic and social theories of Saskia Sassen and the rock group The Who’s musical output from 1965.

  • Bon Voyage Mr. Dills sort of affair

    Bon Voyage Mr. Dills Event
    Monday October 23rd 7PM
     
    Todd Dills is the editor of THE2NDHAND, often referred to as \”the single most important literary vessel in all of Chicago, maybe the world.\” His new novel, Sons of the Rapture, is out now from Featherproof Books.
     
    This will be an event for his new book and some surprise all-star second hand contributors will be reading to.

  • WATCH OUT by Joseph Suglia

    Saturday October 21st 8PMJoseph Suglia reads fromWATCH OUT
     
    Joseph Suglia earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University. He is a literary critic and writer of what he calls “excessive fiction.” He claims that WATCH OUT is his greatest achievement as a writer.
     
    WATCH OUT is the story of Jonathan Barrows, a man who falls in love with himself—literally. He is sexually attracted to his own body, carries out an erotic relationship with a blow-up doll, and takes pleasure in rejecting the advances of his many admirers. Eventually, he assassinates the world’s most celebrated pop diva, Britney Spears.”You strange creatures,” Barrows declares, “You are nothing more to Me than a meal at the fast-food restaurant of life.” But who will end up being devoured?
     

  • Off Site EventThe Best American Comics Book Release Partywith Harvey Pekar and more

    NOT AT QUIMBYS!!!! But we’re selling books there.
    Thursday, October 19th, 6:30PMThe Best American Comics Book Release Partyslideshow / booksigning / panel / partyAt the Hideout with Editors Harvey Pekar and Anne E. Moore!Plus local Chicago contributors Ivan Brunetti, Anders Nilsen and Lilli Carre!The Hideout is located at 1354 W Wabansia, Chicago IL 60622.For more info: www.hideoutchicago.com

  • Perpetual Motion Roadshow #37 WHOA!

    Perpetual Motion Roadshow #37 FeaturingElliot Harmon, Ocho, and Dave Fried at Quimby?s!Saturday, October 14th, 7:00 PMFREE
     
    Perpetual Motion Roadshow #37 featuring: recovering slam poet ELLIOT HARMON from San Francisco! irreverent guitarist OCHO from Minnesota! zine-making punk DAVE FRIED from Chicago!
     
    Elliot Harmon is a poet and, more sporadically, an actor, a Musician, a playwright, a teacher, a graduate student, and a director. He grew up in South Dakota and developed national recognition through the Omaha poetry-slam scene. Since then, he’s been featured at numerous readings and slams across the Western U.S. His allusions to Brecht and Chekhov (not to mention his San Francisco street address) do little to hide his true country-boy poetic sensibilities. His backpack includes several copies of his two chapbooks, Luke, Don’t Settle! and Summer of the Pterodactyl, and his CD, But You Don’t Understand. harmon.idiolexicon.com
     
    Ocho has been performing original songs for almost ten years. His songs reflect a mind that’s upbeat, thoughtful, irreverent, frustrated, and inspired. They give the listener something to laugh at, like the futility of survival in the modern world, and the lack of answers to important life questions: “What’s our ultimate purpose?” and “How can I make money without really DOING anything?” At 16, he unwittingly started a punk-rock scene in a rural South Dakota town that still thrives. He recently received his Master’s degree in counseling psychology. His latest CD, “GoriillaBuddha,” explores the stupidity and healing power of that science. www.myspace.com/ocho
     
    Dave Fried has lived in Chicago, Illinois for the past nine years. His favorite things in life include (in some order of importance): eating tacos, riding bikes, d-beat punk, and bowling. He’ll most likely want to try the regional food in your area. He made his first zine in 1994 after reading about Riot Grrrl, making the connection between punk and zines. He writes the queerpunk perzine Black Carrot and helps fill the void with Grilled Tuna Tape distro. If you ever want to get his blood moving, put on some Finnish Hardcore, offer a coffee and take him bowling.

  • John Gall author of Sayonara Home Run!

    John Gall author of Sayonara Home Run!Saturday, October 7th, 7:00 PM
    Author of Sayonara Home Run! The art of the Japanese Baseball Card John Gall, is the art director for Vintage/Anchor Books. His award-winning designs have been recognized by the AIGA, Art Directors Club, Print, Graphis, and ID Magazine, and are featured in several design surveys. His writing, on topics ranging from the history of Grove Press to contemporary skateboard graphics, has appeared in Print and Critique.
     
    Sayonara Home Run! introduces curious fans to Japan\’s national pastime through the lens of the country\’s playfully beautiful baseball cards. A fascinating text traces the roots and cross-cultural history of the Japanese game, while hundreds of illustrations showcase gorgeous vintage cards. Woven throughout are profiles of key Japanese players, features on important U.S. team tours of Japan (with Japanese cards of players such as Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio), and insights into the social history of the cards. Including primers on Japanese player nicknames and baseball terms, and the fine points of the Japanese game, Sayonara Home Run! is a must-have for anyone interested in baseball, Japan, or this unique chapter in popular design.
     
    This will be a book signing with free vintage, totally authentic, Japanese baseball card giveaway. Snacks and refreshments will be provided too.