Blog

Signing for 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden
Saturday, December 3rd, 7 PM
FREE
Matt Madden?s Exercises in Style is a series of engrossing one-page comics that tell the same story in a variety of ways. Inspired by Raymond Queneau?s 1947 work of the same title, a mainstay of creative writing courses that The New York Times Book Review called ?truly original? upon its initial publication, Madden?s project demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities available to all storytellers. The project developed a cult following from its inception in 1998, and in early 2004, Madden launched www.EXERCISESINSTYLE.com, a site showcasing the project, finding a broad audience and immediate critical attention and praise. The website was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
 
99 WAYS TO TELL A STORY is a collection of the complete ?Exercises in Style? project, illustrating all 99 different graphic approaches to telling the same story. Readers are taken on an enlightening tour?sometimes surprising, always amusing?through the world of the story.
 
For the event Matt Madden will be signing 99 Ways to Tell a Story.
 
Matt Madden started self-publishing minicomics in the early 1990s. He published his first graphic novel, Black Candy in 1998, and in 2001 published Odds Off. Madden lives in Brooklyn with his wife, author and cartoonist Jessica Abel. He works in comics and illustration, and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Yale University. His latest works appear in A Fine Mess, his bi-annual series published by Alternative Comics.
 
Check out:
www.mattmadden.com
www.exercisesinstyle.com
 

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Nov 13th 5PM
FREE
Join members of the “Diamonds on Archer” collective as they demonstrate how silk screening works. Bring items to be screened and walk out with a new take on fashion and D.I.Y. printing.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org

Friday November 18th 7PM
Kevin Coval Book Release, reading, signing for the book of poems, Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, published by EM Press (www.em-press.com)
 
KEVIN COVAL has performed on four continents in seven countries at universities, high schools, and conferences, including; The Parliament of the World?s Religions in Capetown, South Africa, The African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, Yale, Stanford, St. Xavier?s in Bombay, India and four seasons of Russell Simmons HBO Def Poetry Jam, for which he also serves as an artistic consultant.
 
Coval?s writing has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution (Source Books), Awakening The Spirit (Skylight Paths), XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reporter, Cross Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Garland Court Review, The Daily Herald, The Courier News, Fly Paper, seen on C-Span and can be heard regularly on WBEZ?s 848 on Chicago Public Radio.
 
Co-founder of The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival: Louder Than A Bomb, Coval is the Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and a Co-Producer of The Hip-Hop Theater Festival- Chicago.
 

Saturday Nov 12th 8PMBluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir Release Party
featuring bird-themed readings from:
 
Joe Meno has a new book of short stories Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir from Triquarterly Press.
Megan Stielstra is an amazing fiction writer whose work as appeared frequently in Sleepwalk magazine.
Jonathan Messinger curates the Dollar Store Reading Series and is responsible for Thisisgrand.org
Anne E. Moore is associate publisher for Punk Planet magazine and is sharp.
Susannah Felts teaches writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She contributes regularly to the Chicago Reader, and recently completed a novel

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Sunday Nov 6th
FREE
Gutters Special Southside edition 5PM
Gutters is a free independent printed media workshop with an emphasis on
minicomics and zines. Gutters has two main goals, the first being teaching
people all about indie printed media. We do this by bringing in special
guests for demos and discussions. If it’s on paper and there’s more than
one
of them, we’ll show you how to do it. The other goal is to help the DIY
publishing community here in Chicago get to know one another. There is a
social aspect to all of our events, and we really want to get people
together and excited about self-publishing. Gutters is free and open to
anyone. We normally meet the last Sunday of every month at Chicago Comics,
3244 N. Clark from 3 to 6PM. So this will be a special edition. For more
info check our blog at myspace.com/gutterszine.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org

John Hodgman reads from his new book AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE
Wed. Nov. 2nd 7:00PM
 
In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although bestsellers such as Poor Richard?s Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true. Here is a different kind of handy desk reference, one in which all of the historical oddities and amazing true facts are sifted through the singular, illuminating imagination of John Hodgman?which is the nice way of saying: He made it all up.
 
John Hodgmean is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, as well as a frequent contributor to This American Life and McSweeney’s.net, where he once answered questions and dispensed advice in the semi-regular, semi-helpful column ASK A FORMER PROFESSIONAL LITERARY AGENT.
 
This will be a reading and Q&A with musical accompaniment (guitarist). Walkie-talkies may be involved. Visit www.littlegraybooks.com for more on John’s other exploits
 
Wednesday, November 2nd, 7:00 PM

An Evening of ReadingsSaturday, Nov. 5th 8PMFree
Mike Smith: Mike Smith is from Fairdale, a small place in Kentucky. He once taught high school math with his English degree. He is the author of Tell Christian I\’m Sorry and the co-editor of Where Handstands Surprise Us. He is currently the editor of the online zine, decomp.
 
Jason Jordan: Jason Jordan is from New Albany, Indiana, and currently hosts the Bean Street Reading Series there. He writes book and music reviews for various online zines. His novel, Powering the Devil\’s Circus, is forthcoming. He edited last year\’s IUS Review.
 
Simon McKim: Simon McKim, originally from Indiana, plays in the bands, The Pitiful Jupiters and The Alecks, and appeared in the final installment of Joe Meno\’s zine, Sleepwalk. He, too, has a novel coming out, and enjoys philosophy. He is the editor of a zine called Bloviate This.
 
Todd Dills: Todd Dills is from South Carolina, but has lived in Chicago for over five years now. He is the editor of THE2NDHAND, a broadsheet and online zine. He recently edited ALL HANDS ON: A THE2NDHAND READER, which is kind of the best of THE2NDHAND, with some new stuff, too.

Chip KiddFri. Nov 4th 7:00PM
 
Chip Kidd is universally recognized as an American master of contemporary book design. At the forefront of a revolution in publishing, Kidd’s iconic covers, with their inventive marriage of type and found images, have influenced an entire generation of design practitioners in many fields. Chip Kidd: Book One collects all of his book covers and designs for the first time, as well as hundreds of developmental sketches and concepts-annotated by Kidd and by many of the best-selling authors he’s worked with over the years. The result is an important contribution to the design canon today as well as a visually dazzling (and often hilarious) insider’s look at the design and publishing process. The book also showcases Kidd’s work with comics and graphic novels, including his collaborations with leading artists and writers in the field. Featured are projects for DC Comics, including Batman and Superman, as well as Kidd’s award-winning exploration of the art of Charles M. Schulz. Chip Kidd: Book One is sure to enthrall design aficionados, book lovers, pop-culture fanatics, comics fans, and design students.
 
About the Author
Chip Kidd is associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf. His first novel, The Cheese Monkeys, was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is the editor-at-large for Pantheon and the author of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Batman Collected, and others. He is presently at work on a second novel, The Learners. He lives in New York City and Stonington, Connecticut.

Sat, Oct 15th, 3PMCHRIS WARE will be in the store!The Acme Novelty Library book will be out!
 
Chris Ware Signing at Quimby?s
 
Utterly eschewing the general bonhomie surrounding the newly-minted contemporary regard for the comic strip medium as a language of complicated personal expression and artistic sophistication, professional colorist and award-winning letterer F. C. Ware (aka: Chris Ware) returns to the book trade with THE ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY: Annual Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book, a hardcover distillation of all his surviving one-page cartoon jokes which were sprinkled throughout his regular comic book periodical, of the same name, over the past decade.
 
Sometimes claimed to be his ?best work? (by those who really don?t know any better), this definitive congestion of stories of the future, the old west, and even of modern life, includes a luminescent map of the heavens, a chart of the general structure of the universe, assorted cut-out activities, and a complete history of The ACME Novelty Company itself, decorated with rare photographs, early business ventures, not to mention the smallest example of a comic strip ever before offered to the general public. Enclosed in a hard case with belly band, (but not just any belly band?the reverse is a comic strip in which six out of six have a different ending), THE ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY encompasses all of Ware?s extraordinary characters in both new and previously published material (including the complete seventh and fifteenth issues of The Acme Novelty Library, long out of print): Jimmy Corrigan, Tales of Tomorrow, Rocket Sam, Quimby the Mouse, the Super-man, Sparky the Cat, Big Tex; and introducing Rusty Brown?the world?s most pathetic, overgrown adolescent toy collector. As Ware says, ?it may prove a rather mild disappointment, but at least it catches the light in a nice way and may force a smile here and there before being shelved for the next generation?s ultimate disregard and/or disposal.? THE ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY is like nothing else in the world of comics. If it was, why bother?
 
About the Author:
Chris Ware is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The Chicago Reader. His first book, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, won the 2001 Guardian First Book Award and was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial of American Art, marking the first-ever inclusion of cartoon art. Ware recently put together the thirteenth issue of McSweeney?s Quarterly Concern?a comics anthology that is already regarded as one of the finest of its kind. He continues to work on two upcoming genuinely serious graphic novels. The 16th issue of his regular periodical, not uncoincidentally titled ?The ACME Novelty Library,? will be released this fall. He lives in Chicago, IL with his wife and daughter.

Quimby’s Bridgeport is at 3201 S. Morgan, which is south of W. 31st street and west of Halsted, between and S. Aberdeen and S. Lituanica Ave.
 
Saturday Oct 29th 7PM
FREE
Imaginary History Fauxhemian Wine Tasting Bring your own bottle of wine/non-alcoholic wine/wine-flavored beverage of your choosing (decorate the label first), and discuss the the history you’ve created. How was this wine prepared? With what does it pair well? Where does it come from? How does it taste? What is delicious/lame about it? What is the vintage? This is all up to you. Cheese will be provided. Feel free to wear those cocktail outfits that you feel like you’re all dressed up in but have nowhere to go.
 
This event is part of Select Media Festival, full line up and info can be found atwww.selectmediafestival.org