Blog

Thomas Edwarrd “Eddie” Shaw,bass player in The Monksbook signing event with RoctoberThursday April 29th 8PM
 
Thomas Edwarrd “Eddie” Shaw, bass player in The Monks, the legendary garage band made up of American GI’s based in Germany in the 60s. “The anti-Beatles” are often referred to as the first punk band, and their dark, intense LP “Black Monk Time” is considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Eddie will be signing copies of his critically accclaimed memoir of his days in the band, also titled Black Monk Time (Carson Street Press). He will also be signing his latest book, Beltrami’s River, a historical novel about a visionary amateur explorer. He will also discuss his upcoming book (which he will be in Chicago researching) about his days as a Jazz/Funk fusion musician in the 70s.
 
Jake Austen is the editor of Roctober Magazine and co-producer of Chic-A-Go-Go, Chicago’s longest running, first run, weekly local dance show. The latest issue of Roctober (to be released at this event) is the TV Rock & Roll issue, featuring amongst other things, an interview with Shaw about the monks legendary TV appearances.
In addition to Shaw’s signing and reading, there will also be a projected video of the monks German TV appearances.
 
WOW!!!
more info at www.roctober.com

SPEC Chicago presents Readings from
ROAR MagazineFriday, April 23nd, 4:00 PM
 
SPEC Chicago presents an afternoon of readings featuring students from Jesse Senechal?s ROAR Magazine class at Kelvyn Park High School, Chicago.
 
Readers most likely will include: Isabel Jaimes, Christina Kortuba, Dennys Lucero, Rafael Diaz, Mayra Guitierrez, Alex Chamorro, Daisy Pelayo and Anais Torres.
 
Further information and updates can be found at www.selfpublishers.org

An evening of readings with Mike Smith, Mickey Hess & Andrew WalkerSaturday, July 10th, 7:00 PM
 
Mike Smith is a writer, but makes more by working at libraries and radio stations. Two of his stories have appeared in the Edward Society. He once used his training in English to teach high school Math. Tell Christian I\’m Sorry is his first novel and is loosely based on Smith\’s life, from his Fairdale, Kentucky upbringing to his short-lived teaching career.
 
Mickey Hess lives in Louisville, Kentucky, city of Colonel Sanders\’ grave and the KFC world headquarters. Author of Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, Nobody Likes a Smartass, and El Cumpleanos de Paco, Mickey is proud to be included in the forthcoming McSweeney\’s Humor Anthology. He teaches writing at Indiana University Southeast.
 
Andrew Walker has performed at places like the University of Louisville and Indiana University Southeast. He attends both of these universities simultaneously and enjoys his studies in writing. His story A Religious Revelation Without the Religion will be featured in the upcoming anthology, Where Handstands Surprise Us: The Best of the Bean Street Reading Series.
 
More info is at: www.mickeyhess.net
www.tellchristian.com
 
FREE

Richard Metzger live in-store
Saturday June 5th 2PM
 
Disinformation co-founder and “wicked warlock” Richard Metzger signs and discusses the company\’s book and DVD releases.
 
A highlight of the afternoon is the screening of rarely seen clips from the infamous “banned” Disinformation TV series, first aired on Channel 4 in the UK and bought for the US by SciFi Network, whose executives panicked once they realized what they had bought and promptly shelved the episodes. The Los Angeles Times described the show as “The Punk Rock 60 Minutes”.
 
Segments include revelations on transsexual glamor chic; Brice Taylor, the alleged “CIA brain-slave” (who claimed Sylvester Stallone made her have sex with dolphins); and the high-tech, alien-connected Montauk Project. Metzger\’s favorite artists, Joe Coleman and Paul Laffoley, were featured, as were segments from the notorious Uncle Goddamn, a mentally challenged and brutally extreme version of Jackass.

Quimby?s welcomesThe Perpetual Motion Roadshow #14
Starring Gavin Grant, Geoffrey Goodwinand, Lisa LadouceurMonday, July 12th, 8:00pm
 
Gavin J. Grant moved from Scotland to the USA in 1991. He worked in bookshops in LA and Boston and then for BookSense.com. He lives in Northampton, MA with his wife, Kelly Link, and is trying to balance freelancing, Small Beer Press, and renovating an old farmhouse. Since 1996 he has published a zine, Lady Churchill?s Rosebud Wristlet. He reviews for BookPage and Xerography Debt and has written for the Hartford Courant, Time Out New York, Scifiction, The Urban Pantheist, Full Unit Hookup, Surgery of Modern Warfare, and .is this a cat? His accent comes through when he reads.
More info is at: http://lcrw.net/lcrw/index.htm
 
Geoffrey H. Goodwin is a sober and decent person, but he’s terrified of reality. Some people go “EeEeEek!” when they see a rodent or a tarantula –and Geoffrey sometimes does that too — but he’s most often left gasping by things that occur in the “real world.” (This is not to say that both rodents and tarantulas are not sometimes considered “real,” but this rapidly devolves into an epic ramble involving semantics, mousetraps and segmented legs.) So, most of all, Geoffrey H. Goodwin performs speculative fiction, strange off-kilter rants that attempt to make the strange, strange world make sense, sense, sense.
More info: http://www.surgeryofmodernwarfare.com/archives/dec2203/dec2203.html
 
Liisa Ladouceur writes poems and reads signs. She was born with one i in Penetanguishene, Ontario a small town famous for its asylum and curlers. She got out with her sanity and her hair crimper and landed in Toronto, where she works as a rock critic/pop culture pundit for papers (eye weekly) and radio (CBC). Recently, her obsession with signs has resulted in a series of poems composed entirely from words photographed in public spaces. She will read these, with accompanying photos, along with new Sign Language poems created in each city of the tour, performed fresh nightly, nicely.
More info is at: http://www.spiderrecords.com/liisa
 

Graphic Novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels reads from
The Changers
Saturday, May 15th, 7:30 PM
 
Join Ezra Claytan Daniels in debuting his new project: The Changers Progress Diary, a full-length Audio CD verbally chronicling the circumstances surrounding and influencing the creation of The Changers, one of the most critically acclaimed sci-fi graphic novels of 2003. From inspiration to insecurity, elation to devastation, and beginning to end, The Changers Progress Diary is a unique and unprecedented step into the mind of the artist. Along with the signing there will also be an original art raffle, a live reading, and special guest Grant Reynolds?author of the comics Orange Dirt & Study Group 12.
 
The Changers is a unique epic of subtle realism that reverentially embraces the conceptual foundations of the Science Fiction genre. The story\’s drama arises from the psychological conflict manifesting between Bisso and Geaza, and the lengths to which each will go to make the other submit. Their positions staked firmly on morally unstable grounds, these are not heroes and villains, but simply people made remarkable by nothing more than the circumstances of their origins – and the emotionally crippling burdens set upon them by those they left behind.
 
Featuring over 45 minutes of original background music, The Changers Progress Diary CD is the centerpiece of a limited edition (500), signed, numbered bundle which also includes both volumes of The Changers miniseries, all bound together in a semi-transparent, high-quality vellum wrap.
 
More info is at: www.dream-chocolate.com

Hunter Kennedy and Jeff Johnson of
the Minus Times read Live at Quimby?s
Sunday, April 25th, 4:30 PM
 
Hunter Kennedy and Jeff Johnson of the Minus Times will be conducting a reading where they will read stories, letters, and personal ads until asked to leave.
 
Jeff Johnson is the contributing editor for the Minus Times as well as a regular contributor to McSweeney\’s and senior editor at Jane Magazine. Hunter Kennedy is an editor and novelist last known to be hiding out in Charleston, South Carolina.
 
The current issue of the Minus Times #28 features:
 
Contributors:
Bell / Berman / deWitt / Foust / Haynes
Johnson / H.Kennedy / T.Kennedy / Laus / Lipsyte
Logan / McKenna / Neely / Rotter / Van Daley
 
plus:
Interview with Stephen Colbert of The Daily Show
 
Mixed tapes from:
Spoon, Califone, Decemberists, Songs: Ohia
 

Lori Wallach discusses her new book Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO
Thursday, April 22nd, 7:30 PM
 
“A crucial guide – devastating and highly readable. Wallach and Woodall are warriors for democracy against its most powerful opponents.”
-Naomi Klein Author No Logo & Fences and Windows
 
Globalization affects our lives every day in myriad ways-often for the worse. Yet, as this eye-opening expos? documents, the current terms of corporate-led globalization are not inevitable: they are merely one option being imposed by the powerful, secretive, and profoundly undemocratic World Trade Organization.
 
Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO is the definitive guide to the WTO. It reveals which World Trade Organization policies have led to U.S. job losses, the race to the bottom in wages, unsafe food, attacks on long-standing environmental and health laws, and burgeoning international inequality. Want to know why the WTO attracts such passionate protests all over the world? This book explains the lopsided agreements and secret tribunals that are the WTO?s stock in trade. Public Citizen advocates Wallach and Woodall carefully document the World Trade Organization\’s appalling nine-year track record with riveting case-by-case accounts.
 
Lori Wallach is the Director of Global Trade Watch, a division of the Nader-founded Public Citizen. A leading expert on trade issues, she has been called “brainy” by The Nation, “savvy” by Business Week, “scrappy” by the Miami Herald and “Ralph Nader with a sense of humor” by the Wall Street Journal. Wallach has testified as a trade lawyer on NAFTA, GATT-WTO, and other trade issues before over 30 U.S. congressional committees, numerous other countries? legislatures, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. She has served as a trade commentator on CNN, ABC, CNBC, C-SPAN, All Things Considered, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Robert Jensen discusses his new book Citizens of the Empire
Thursday, June 17th, 7:30 PM
 
As we approach the elections of 2004, U.S. progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of anti-war demonstrators glibly dismissed as a \”focus group,\” and with the collapse of political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and imperatives used to stifle protest ? \”Support the Troops,\” \”We Are the Greatest Nation On Earth,\” etc. ? a state of hopelessness and cynicism can become overwhelming.
 
In a plainspoken deconstruction of the dominant political rhetoric ?intentionally crafted to depress political discourse and activism ?, Citizens of the Empire probes deeply into the sense of disempowerment that has resulted from the Left?s inability to halt the violent and repressive course of post-9/11 U.S. policy. In this passionate and very personal exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world?s most powerful, affluent, and militarized nation in an era of imperial expansion, Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of the prevailing myths by using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions.
 
Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, among other books. He also writes for popular media, appears on syndicated talk shows regularly– including The O\’Reilly Factor with Bill O\’Reilly, and his opinion and analytic pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.
 
More info at: http://www.citylights.com/CLpubRE.html#citizens
FREE

Walking the Edge of Insanity:
Navigating the World of Mental Health with Open Eyes and Important Questions.
An Evening with The Icarus Project
Thursday April 8th 8PM
 
As folks who generally feel alienated by mainstream culture and question conventional ideas of sanity, what does it mean to be struggling with traditional labels such as ?clinical depression,? ?bipolar disorder,? or ?schizophrenia?? How helpful is the modern medical view of mental disorders that revolves around drugs and psychiatry and how much of it is influenced by powerful pharmaceutical corporations, public funding cuts, and a society that equates economic productivity with health?
 
Come join an exciting discussion that is starting all over the country and is being orchestrated by Sascha Scatter and Ashley McNamara, the directors of The Icarus Project ? a group of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder who are finding new language for all the different experiences that get labeled ?mental illness.?
Come celebrate the release of our little book, Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness: a Reader and Roadmap of Bipolar Worlds, which is a compilation of stories and lessons from brave and misunderstood folks who rarely have the chance to speak and whose insights are going to end up changing the world.
 
Ashley McNamara is an artist, writer, farmer, dreamer, traveler, teacher and mental health activist diagnosed with bipolar disorder who has been roaming around the country putting together zines and editing a book for The Icarus Project. These days her most accurate address is the license plate of her truck, but before taking off for the great wide open with a horde of art supplies and lots of good food she was known to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and grow exceptional lettuce.
 
Sascha Altman DuBrul (aka Sascha Scatter) is a writer and activist who grew up in the New York City squatter subculture and spent years playing in punk bands, riding freight trains, working on farms, and writing political adventure stories about his travels from the forests blockades of the Pacific Northwest to the jungles of Southern Mexico. Sascha has been locked up in psych wards involuntarily three times for losing his mind and is diagnosed classic ?Bipolar I with psychotic tendencies,? which in his mind doesn?t quite capture the essence of the dilemma, but he?s working on creating new and better language to talk about it.
 
for more info check out www.theicarusproject.net