Blog

Joshua Cohen reads from The QuoSaturday, October 8th, 7 PM
FREE
 
Joshua Cohen has performed in-depth investigations into mirrors and navels to return with The Quorum, his first collection of short fiction. A set of ten stories, a set of dreams, and a long monologue, these are all first-person rants given over by the somehow alienated, individuals seeking only a sympathetic hearing, all dealing with identity and religion as well as occupied with technical ideas of reliable narration and the structure of the mind\’s ear. From a review of a book about the Holocaust that\’s six-million blank pages to a suicide note from a young university student, from a letter to home outlining an economy based on hair to a eulogy for a poem, from a story narrated by three-hundred concubines to the title story about a group of people who interchange appearances, habits, proclivities and talents, The Quorum is a sensitively written and inevitably absurd take on the individual\’s lifelong quest to get someone, anyone, to listen.
 
About the author:
Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He has worked as a journalist, essayist, translator and editor for many publications, including the Prague Literary Review, and the Forward. His fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, such as Sleeping Fish, Zeek, Fiction Warehouse, and The New Book of Masks (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Cohen\’s novel, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, is forthcoming from Fugue State Press in 2006.

Signing with Jolene Siana author of Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock CutterThursday November 10th 7pm
 
Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter by Jolene Siana captures teen angst and music obsession like no author before her. Through confessional letters Siana sent to the singer of her favorite band, Go Ask Ogre reveals a troubled but hopeful and often hilarious ?goth? girl, determined to rise above her dysfunctional family life in a dying Midwest city full of head-bangers and fast-food futures.
 
Siana?s life throughout the Reagan era was a deeply troubled one. Her mother was single, alcoholic, and abusive. Jolene grew suicidal and became a ?cutter??someone who cuts their skin to feel relief from emotional pain. A suicidal tailspin led her to reach out to Ogre, the enigmatic singer of the influential industrial band Skinny Puppy. For more than three years, Siana sent Ogre a stream of letters, elaborately decorated with illustrations, photos, stories and clippings.
 
Ogre was so moved by the letters that he kept them in a box for more than a decade, returning them to the author after a chance meeting. After sifting through the details of her former life, Siana?now a well-adjusted and vibrant woman living in Los Angeles?found herself with an ?unintentional memoir,? and a persuasive testament to the power of art and music?even ?Devil Music??to transform lives.
 
Go Ask Ogre features Jolene?s accounts of personal interaction with several alternative heroes from the ?80s?including bailing Skinny Puppy out of jail, attending a slumber party with punk legends The Descendents, getting a pep talk from the Revolting Cocks, meeting Peter Murphy, and more.

October 28, 7pmThe Perpetual Motion Roadshow, an international indie-press tour, will feature three touring writers who also happen to be three nice Canadian boys: ECW press Novelist and pop culture pundit Jason Anderson (Toronto), blogging indie poet Mingus Tourette (Calgary) and electro-rapper Lucas Costello (Toronto). The local act will be poetry vet Larry O. Dean, author of I AM SPAM.

City of Destiny_ Chicago Writers’ NightSaturday August 20, 7:30 pm
 
With featured readers/performers:
Joshua Bermont is an actor/comedian with The Gentleman Callers and open mic host.
 
Kate Cullan is a spoken word performer and open mic host.
 
Emerson Dameron has written for many publications including his former zine, Wherewithal.
 
Thax Douglas, rock poet, is the author of Tragic Faggot Syndrome.
 
Wendy McClure is the author of I’m Not the New Me: A Memoir, blogger at www.poundy.com, and columnist for Bust.
 
Jonathan Messinger runs thisisgrand.org, hosts the Dollar Store readings, and is books editor of Time Out Chicago.
 
Jason Pettus is a travel writer and blogger at jasonpettus.com.
 
This event will be hosted by Katherine Hodges, whose book and zine projects include Noncompliant and City of Destiny.
 
With free mini cocktails and desserts!

Friday October 29th 7PMNick Ostdick, author of Sunbeams and cigarettes
 
First time novelist Nick Ostdick has been writing for about five years. He has had a few works published on the web, as well as being the front man for a alternative rock band. Sunbeams and Cigarettes, his first novel will be available on October 17, and a relentless touring schedule will follow. Living in Northern Illinois, he is currently at work on his second novel, as well as a book of short stories.

THE2NDHAND presents:
Mickey Hess, Daniel Buckman, and Jonathan Messinger, live and riffing heavy.
September 10, 7:30 PM
 
Mickey Hess (www.mickeyhess.net), author of the 2003 memoir “Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory”, hails from Louisville, where he writes, teaches, and thinks about hip-hop.
 
Daniel Buckman lives and writes in Chicago. He is the author of a trio of novels, “Water in Darkness,” “The Names of Rivers,” and most recently “Morning Dark.”
 
Jonathan Messinger is Time Out Chicago’s books editor and proprietor at ThisISGrand.org, site for stories of Chicago’s rapid transit.
 

Chicago Noir Event
Friday September 2nd 7PM
with Marlon James (John Crow’s Devil), Neal Pollack (editor of Chicago Noir),
and Joe Meno (How the Hula Girl Sings).
 
CHICAGO NOIR, edited by Neal Pollack
 
On the heels of the stunning success of the summer ’04 award-winning
bestseller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books launches a groundbreaking series of original
noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a
distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Now: Chicago
Noir.
 
Brand new stories by: Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski,
Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeff
Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills,
C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer.
 
Chicago Noir is populated by hired killers and jazzmen, drunks and dreamers,
corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies. It’s the Chicago that the
Department of Tourism doesn’t want you to see, a place where hard cases face their
sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. These are stories about blocks that
visitors are afraid to walk. They tell of a Chicago beyond Oprah, Michael
Jordan, and deep-dish pizza. This isn’t someone’s dream of Chicago. It’s not even
a nightmare. It’s just the real city, unfiltered. Chicago Noir.
 
NEAL POLLACK worked as a reporter for the Chicago Reader from 1993-2000,
where he wrote the “Petty Crime” column, among many other assignments. He’s the
author of three books of satire, including the cult classic The Neal Pollack
Anthology of American Literature and the rock-n-roll novel Never Mind the
Pollacks. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and magazines, and
he?s a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and Nerve.
 
HOW THE HULA GIRL SINGS By Joe Meno
 
Paperback reissue of the second novel from the author of the smash hit
HAIRSTYLES OF THE DAMNED.
 
A young ex-con in a small Illinois town. A lonely giant with a haunted past.
A beautiful girl with a troubled heart. Strange and darkly magical, How the
Hula Girl Sings begins exactly where most pulp fiction usually ends, with the
vivid episode of the terrible crime itself. Three years later, Luce Lemay, out
on parole for the awful tragedy, does his best to finds hope: in a new job at
the local Gas-N-Go; in his companion and fellow ex-con, Junior Breen, who
spells out puzzling messages to the unquiet ghosts of his past; and finally, in the
arms of the lovely but reckless Charlene. How the Hula Girl Sings is a
suspenseful exploration of a country bright with the far-off stars of forgiveness,
but still dark with the still-looming shadow of the death penalty.
 
JOE MENO is a fiction writer from Chicago and winner of a Nelson Algren
Literary Award. His latest best-selling novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, a
selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program, follows the
exploits of adolescents as they struggle for belonging on Chicago’s south side. He
is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College, Chicago, the cofounder
of Sleepwalk magazine, coeditor of Bail magazine, and a columnist for Punk
Planet magazine.
 
JOHN CROW’S DEVIL
a debut novel by Marlon James
 
THIS STUNNING DEBUT NOVEL tells the story of a biblical struggle in a remote
Jamaican village in 1957. With language as taut as classic works by Cormac
McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, Marlon James reveals
his unique narrative command that will firmly establish his place as one of
today’s freshest, most talented young writers.
 
IN THE VILLAGE OF GIBBEAH — where certain women fly and certain men protect
secrets with their lives — magic coexists with religion, and good and evil
are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God.
The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the “Rum Preacher”) is
dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself “Apostle” York. Handsome and
brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a
phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow’s Devil is a
novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal
struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.
 
MARLON JAMES was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970. He graduated from the
University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in Literature. An
award-winning artist and writer, this is his first novel. He lives in Kingston.

William E Burleson, discusses his new book Bi America
Thursday, Sept 15th 7:00PM
 
William E Burleson, author of Bi America, is a Twin Cities HIV prevention educator, activist, and writer. One of the founders of the Bisexual Organizing Project, Burleson is a past coordinator for BECAUSE: the Midwest Conference on Bisexuality.
 
Burleson is a regular speaker and workshop facilitator at conferences and on college campuses, discussing the bisexual community and the nature of sexuality. Current projects include writing essays about bisexuality for various GLBT publications and electronic newsletters and producing a weekly Minneapolis cable access television show, BiCities!
 
This will be a book reading and signing for the new book from Haworth Press, Bi America: Myths, Truths and Struggles of an Invisible Community.
 
Check Out
www.bi101.org

DVD RELEASE PARTY for SO WRONG THEY?RE RIGHT
Saturday, September 24th, 7PM
 
SO WRONG THEY?RE RIGHT, is the award-winning documentary about American 8-track format fanatics made by local Chicago filmmakers RUSS FORSTER and DAN SUTHERLAND in 1995. The evening?s festivities will include:
 
RUSS FORSTER performing his top eight 8-track songs on banjo, guitar, and even acapella, including a version of ?Stairway To Heaven? complete with original fade out, click, and fade in!
 
DAN SUTHERLAND reading some of his hilarious prose culled from his days writing for the collector magazine 8-TRACK MIND!
 
DEACON COLEMAN preaching the gospel of 8-track fresh from his pulpit at the Church of NONE BUT THE RIGHTEOUS!
 
Eulogies for two of the collectors who have passed on to the infinite loop, officiated by DEACON COLEMAN!
 
Clips of movie highlights, including street preaching by DEACON COLEMAN, eye-dancing by BURNSEE and DUST, and format surfing by the self-proclaimed 8-Track Messiah JAMES ?BIG BUCKS? BURNETT!
 
Giveaways, snacks and beverages, and of course copies of the DVD for signing and sale!

Machine magazine Launch Wednesday August 31, 8PM
 
Emerson Dameron: The only guy on the bill that is from
the South, Emerson Dameron was belittled in The Reader
as being a Tarintino wanna-be and heralded in UR
Chicago as one of the highlights of the Chicago zine
scene. The Reader was wrong. He’s a Jim Jarmusch
wanna-be.
 
Eric Lab Rat: When The Machine first heard the piece,
“Eric Lab Rat is Retarded,” we all agreed that he
should write a monthly column. After spending time
with the Rev., we’re come to the conclusion that he
was right, he is retarded. He’s also a member of the
Gentlemen Callers, which is a total waste of time.
 
Matt LaPorte: Mr. LaPorte is the Gay and Lesbian
editor of The Machine. This means that he is hated in
most of America. He also walks dogs. This means that
he is in touch with the canines. But he hates them.
Matt hates everyone.
 
Kelsey Snell: Ms. Snell is the creator and
co-Editor-In-Chief of The Machine. Her media
experience did not adequately prepare her for the
cockfest that is this reading. If you hate her
reading, you hate women. If you like her reading, you
are a forward thinking individual who knows what is
best for you and the world.
 
Brandon Wetherbee: Brandon has wasted ink in Foul,
Sanitary and Ship, college newspapers, religious
propaganda, the Bible and Entertainment Weekly. His
dream of becoming the guy in sweatpants on the bus at
4am was realized last Wednesday. He is also
co-Editor-In-Chief of The Machine.
 
Charlie Deets: The Machine decided to be ?artsy? and
have a Chicago musician write a monthly column.
Rather than make sense, Mr. Deets confesses to us like
one would confess to a priest or therapist. The
Machine didn?t want this. But we?re too afraid
Charlie will kill himself and take us with him, so we
let him keep writing.