Blog

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

Xeric Grant winner Cathy Hannah presents her graphic novella Winter BeardSaturday, May 6th, 5:30 PMFREE
 
Cathy Hannah is a 25-year-old comics artist, art historian, and self-proclaimed nerd. She was awarded the fall 2005 Xeric Grant to self-publish her graphic novella, Winter Beard. An 80 page autobiography chronicling one winter on Cathy?s life, Winter Beard tells the story of having a crush on your best friend and all the scheming, hoping, & sadness of telling them how you feel.
 
Cathy Hannah is a graduate student at The School of the Art Institute in art history. She attended The Savannah College of Art and Design for her undergrad and got a degree in Sequential Art. This is her first solo-published work and comics debut.

Ducky DooLittleauthor ofSEX WITH THE LIGHTS ONSigning and Q & AMay 17th 7PMfree
 
Few sex educators are as well-matched to the task of dispensing safe, honest, affirming sex advice as Ducky Doolittle, a former Times Square stripper, who emerged from behind the peepshow glass to climb to the top ranks of advisors on all matters sexual. For more than a decade, she has toured the country with her one-woman show, visiting hundreds of cities, where she has answered sex advice queries from thousands of women and men-partnered and singled, straight and gay. Ducky’s winning humor and rich knowledge of human sexuality have allowed complete strangers to open up and reveal their most intimate thoughts.
 
In Sex with the Lights On she shares for the first time the most-often asked questions, which include: What’s the best oral sex technique? Does every woman have a G-spot-and what are the top tips for locating her own? Can men have multiple orgasms? How does a couple introduce anal sex into their relationship? Why do anti-depressants lower sex drive and how can that be avoided? Ducky not only answers each question with a sex-positive open-mind, she gives readers permission to laugh and relax and to create the sex lives that best suit their own desires.
 
ADVANCE REVIEWS:
“Absolutely essential guide for everyone with a body! Incredibly detailed, informative, compassionate, funny, wise and sexy as hell.”- MARGARET CHO
 
“Something sexy, smart, and inspirational happens every time you turn a page of this book. Ducky is a national erotic treasure.” – SUSIE BRIGHT
 
“Ducky is a delight! She?s a brilliant sex educator – truly one of a kind. Besides being lots of fun to read, this body-positive, heartfelt book will deliver sex skills you can use tonight and can carry with you the rest of your life.” – ANNIE SPRINKLE.
 
More info at: www.duckydoolittle.com
 

Madison Clell author of CuckooFriday April 28th8:00PM Free
 
Former multiple personality disordered Madison Clell will be answering questions and reading from her acclaimed graphic novel CUCKOO. A compilation of 13 comics issues under the same name, its readers include author/lawyer Andrew Vachss, who called CUCKOO
 
” ..a gleaming scalpel, expertly wielded against the tumor of evil. This is a stunning achievement, both artistically and personally, graphically illustrating the cosmic distance between ‘survivor’ and ‘transcender.’ ”
 
Dr. Patch Adams, who subscribed to the entire comics series said, ” ..I would make CUCKOO required reading. “, and then he penned the novel’s intro.
 
Madison is one of the featured artists for Chicago’s Cultural Center show, HUMANS BEING, and a participant in Bodies of Work; The Chicago Festival of Disability Arts & Culture this April 20-30.

McSweeney’s presentsYannick Murphy reading fromHere They ComeMonday, April 10th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Splitting time between a garbage-strewn apartment and an overly affectionate hot dog vendor, the observant thirteen-year-old who stands steadily at the center of Here They Come gives lyrical voice to an unforgettable instant?1970s New York, stifling, violent, and full of life. Balanced between her enigmatic siblings, borderline parents, and a quiet sense of the surreal, she recounts a year of vivid, mundane moments with dark humor and deadpan resilience. By Yannick Murphy, author of the New York Times Notable Book Sea of Trees .
 
?This is a hell of a book. You might not be able to finish Here They Come in one sitting, but it will haunt you till you do. What detail! What characters! I can imagine both Jane Austen and Raymond Carver pouring over this masterly novel.?
 
?Frank McCourt, author of Angela?s Ashes
 
?Yannick Murphy is a uniquely talented writer who manages to turn everything on its head and make dark, funny, shocking and beautiful prose out of the detritus of growing up poor, fatherless, and cockeyed. She is fearless.?
 
?Lily Tuck, winner of the 2004 National Book Award
 
?Yannick Murphy?s long-awaited Here They Come is a unique combination of rare linguistic lyricism with brutal and brilliant prose. It is an unrelenting portrait of family, terrifying for its honesty, its willingness to be ugly and elegant. Haunting.?
 
?A.M. Homes, author of The Safety of Objects and The End of Alice

Ken Foster, Elizabeth Crane and Furry FriendsMonday April 24th7:00PMFree
 
This is a reading and benefit for Furry Friends Foundation, a Chicago area no-kill shelter. Featuring: Ken Foster is the author of The Dogs Who Found Me and The Kind I’m Likely to Get; he is also editor of Dog Culture and the KGB Bar Reader. Elizabeth Crane is the author of Oh The Glory of it All and When the Messenger is Hot. Plus other friends, including Furry Friends Foundation.
 
Praise for The Dogs Who Found Me:
“Generosity and gratitude power this compelling account of the reciprocal nature of rescue. Ken Foster illuminates a profound lesson about saving a life: Doing it makes you able to do it.”
?Amy Hempel, author of The Dog of the Marriage and Reasons to Live
 
“I read this at once, and could hardly bear to put it down. This is a wonderful, strange book, beautiful and funny and moving. It’s about the necessity of dogs, and about the necessity of the heart. It’s for people who love dogs, and for people who don’t yet know how to. It delivers something crucial about bravery, the human spirit, and the place that dogs occupy in our landscapes. It’s about confronting need, vulnerability and love, and responding.”–Roxana Robinson
 
“Ken Foster writes about the human/canine bond with wisdom, insight, and great heart. This is a fascinating and useful book, full of great stories and practical knowledge every dog lover needs. Ken’s dogs are lucky to have found him, and so are his readers.”
–Sean Wilsey, author of Oh The Glory of it All
 
Websites:
www.ken-foster.com
www.furryfriendsfoundation.com
 

Jessica Abel signs booksSaturday, April 8th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
La Perdida is the story of Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, who heads to Mexico City to ?find herself.? Her intense desire to make a connection with Mexico and her unwillingness to see the impact of her own history on her understanding combine to turn an innocent journey down a dark path. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida?at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal?is a story about finding yourself by getting lost.
La Perdida originally appeared in serialized form from 2001-2005, published by Fantagraphics Books.
 
Jessica Abel is a cartoonist and writer. Born and raised in Chicagoland, she moved in 2000 to Brooklyn, New York, after a two-year pit stop in Mexico City. In her ?free? time, she likes to build things, garden, and cook, and hopes that doesn?t make her sound like the biggest dork ever. Along with La Perdida she is also responsible for the popular comic Artbabe.

Radio Plays Release EventSaturday, April 1st7:00 PMFREE
 
C T Ballentine proudly presents the first issue of RADIO PLAYS!
 
RADIO PLAYS is not a traditional zine; it is actually an audio periodical in CD format containing exclusive performances of two radio dramas. One play is an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by Todd Dills entitled, Sons of the Rapture, which tells the tale of a desperately indebted young man\’s Ryder truck journey to freedom. The other play is a surrealistic little jaunt written by CT Ballentine called, The Cowboy and His Blazing Trumpets. The audio tale of the mysterious and dangerous Sam, who is out for the doctor\’s blood with nothing standing between them but a robotic secretary of indeterminate gender.
 
For this event both radio plays will be presented and there will also be readings from:
Todd Dills (the2ndhand)
A.B. Drea (Banana King)
Jeb Gleason-Allured