Blog

Tiki Party with Duke Carter the author ofTiki Quest
Friday, October 24th 7:30pm
 
Tiki Quest: Collecting the Exotic Past is the latest book offering for Tiki fanatics. Many discover the mysterious wonders of the world of Tiki through some small cast-off relic. There are those who amass only enough to outfit their home bar, there are others who are obsessed with Tiki in every form. Duke Carter is obsessed. His book catalogues the collection of vintage Tiki he has put together through years of scouring thrift stores, flea markets, and junk shops.
 
Duke Carter has been collecting Tiki with his wife Amy for nearly a decade, and they knew from early on that the Tiki collection was more than just a hobby or casual interest. The Carter?s each had a small collection before they met, and when Amy took Duke to the Hala Kahiki on their first date, he knew they were destined to be together. Four years later they got married at the Kona Kai in Chicago, Illinois. The Carter?s Tiki collection boasts thousands of items and has been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, and on HGTV?s Extreme Homes.

Rob Christopher reads from 100 Spinning Plates
Friday November 21st 8:00 PM
 
Rob Christopher reads from 100 Spinning Plates a collection of 100 Cards–100 Stories.
 
Shuffle & Read. Welcome to the world of Random Literature. 100 Stories on 100 Cards. Read as many as you like, in any order. Piece together your version of an exploded novel–or exploded reality. And let the significance fall where it may.
 
Come see what happens? How the story unfolds?

Androo Robinson reads from his mini-comic Cryptozoa
Saturday December 13th 3PM
 
SevenTen Bishop presents a once in a life time event
featuring renowned illustrator Androo Robinson of Ped
Xing. His series of minicomics have garnered glowing
praise from all over the small press spectrum; from
Factsheet Five to The Comics Journal, and somehow
managed to rack up three Ignatz Award nominations.
 
In addition to the full length Ped Xing zine, Androo
produces the brilliant single panel series Cryptozoa
and the collaborative perzine Secret Mystery Love
Shoes with Maria Goodman. Recently Cryptozoa was
FEATURED in the July issue of Utne Reader!
 
For his performance at Quimby’s Bookstore Androo
provides a very oversized book containing some
favorite Cryptozoa panels and he will read, explain,
defend and discuss his work with the audience.
 
Androo lives and works in Portland, OR

Tom Levinson reads from All That’s Holy
Saturday, November 15, 7:30pm
 
Tom Levinson says he’s no expert on religion, just a guy who set out on a road trip with a notepad and asked dozens of ordinary Americans to open up and tell him about God. Thousands of miles, scores of interviews, 305 pages and four years later, his journey has resulted in the recently published book All That’s Holy, a conversational documentary on contemporary American religious experience that’s earned acclaim from industry journal Publishers Weekly and veteran writers such as Joyce Carol Oates.
 
Levinson, a 29 year old University of Chicago law student, said he paid little attention to religion growing up in an unobservant Jewish family in Manhattan. In the book, Levinson borrows the terms “cafeteria Catholic” and “mess hall Muslim” from his subjects to describe the way Americans pick and choose among traditions as if in a buffet line.
 
In his account, a white New Mexican woman converts to Sikhism by way of yoga, a Cambodian Buddhist treats her cancer with both Western medicine and traditional healing, a southern Baptist says a “Hail Mary” when her daughter gives birth, Hindus worship Jesus icons, neo-pagans transform Halloween into a Celtic ceremony, Orthodox Jews keep kosher but smoke cigarettes, and Muslim women veil themselves but stand up for gender equality in the workplace. The book is light on analysis and heavy on anecdote, which Levinson said is by design.
 
“I wanted it to be as accessible as possible,” he said. “I see the book more as a conversation starter within faith communities … for example, do Baptists in Kentucky know the Muslims in Lexington? If not, why not?” These are the questions he said he hopes his book will encourage readers to ask themselves.
 
Tom Levinson will read and sign copies of All That’s Holy

Geoffrey Bent author of Silent Partners
Saturday November 22nd 8PM
 
Geoffrey Bent will read and sign copies of Silent Partners
 
After 27 years of trying to get his outrageous satire Silent Partners into print, Geoffrey Bent finally found a publisher that didn\’t shy away from the subject matter. This black comedy of fiction delves into the mind of a necrophile, from his early childhood to his final sexual odyssey in search of the ultimate in dead icons to desecrate. The reader hears his innermost thoughts as he rants on God, politics, men, women, and the justification of his own perversions. Is the public ready for a book with subject matter so shocking? The first printing is already sold out.
 
“This wonderfully eccentric novel is by turns amusing and erotic, and always intriguing.”
Scott Turow
 
“Not for those with delicate sensibilities. Bent shatters convention with a sledgehammer and sifts through the remains with a magnifying glass.”
Corbin Chezner

M. Dylan Raskin reads from Little New York Bastard
Monday November 3rd 8PM
 
Meet M. Dylan Raskin (MDR to friends). At 22, he’s the opposite of hip: a working-class college dropout and world-class malcontent who lives with his mother in Queens. Make that Flushing-stinking-Queens, to be precise”and if you know anything about the joint you know that it’s a wretched, horrible place.” Don’t get him wrong: it’s not that he doesn’t like New York, exactly, it’s just that lately he’s felt more and more at odds with everything-his family, his generation, his hometown, even himself. One day he gets fed up and decides to take his freedom on the road, setting off for Chicago in a quixotic attempt to turn his life around.
 
Equal parts road story, coming-of-age memoir, and existential manifesto, LITTLE NEW YORK BASTARD is the true story of an outsider for the ages, a mixed-up kid who knows what he wants in life but has no idea how to get it. Its also an exhilarating addition to the literature of alienated young people looking for meaning in a world whose values seem utterly upside down.
 
Author bio:
M. Dylan Raskin was born in Queens, New York.
 
He will be reading and signing his book.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sowkins with Denise Dee & friends
Saturday, October 18, 7:00pm
 
Join Denise Dee, Tanya Bons & Sara McCool as they celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sowkins, Denise’s autofiction book which was one of the first books printed by “Punks with Presses” The evening will also be a release party for Issue 2 of The Peppermint Papers. They will all read from current work.
 
Dee is a playwright, poet, and autofictionist. She edited and published the seminal punk litzines Lobster Tendencies and The Closest Penguins. Her first play The Family Tree received “Best of the Fringe” at the S.F. Fringe Festival. Some of her favorite places she’s been published are Primal Primers, Znine, Solo Flyer, Street Spirit, and Zyzzyva. Sowkins first printing was paid with through money raised from Denise’s zine, punk communities and friends.
 
For more info visit:
http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/sowkins.html
http://www.creative-writer.net/peppermint.html

A Night with Bitch Magazine
Saturday November 8th 8pm
 
Lisa Jervis, Marisa Meltzer, and Andi Zeisler of Bitch magazine will come to Quimby’s to read from their Family themed Fall issue (as well as some old favorite articles) and answer questions in what should hopefully be a lively Q&A session.
 
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture is a print magazine devoted to media criticism, and witty, occasionally snarky pop culture analysis. It features critiques of TV, movies, magazines, advertising, and more?-plus interviews with and profiles of cool, smart women in all areas of pop culture.
 
Lisa Jervis is the editor and publisher of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and books, including Ms., the San Francisco Chronicle, the Utne Reader, Mother Jones, the Women’s Review of Books, Bust, Hues, Salon, Seventeen, Girlfriends,
Punk Planet, Adios Barbie (Seal Press), 2sexE (North Atlantic Books) and The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin). She was the co-editor of Young Wives’ Tales: Feminists on Love and Commitment (Seal Press). A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Oakland, California, with her two
cats.
 
Marisa Meltzer is the Publicity Manager and frequent contributor to Bitch. Her work has also appeared in Venus, Index, and Black Book. Copies of the latest issues of The Baffler and US Weekly currently coexist peacefully on the coffee table in the Brooklyn, New York home she shares with her dog.
 
Andi Zeisler is a writer, editor, illustrator, textile designer, and human Zip disk for all manner of pop-culture trivia. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture and the former pop-music columnist for the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express. Her work has also appeared in Ms., Bust, Hues, Mother Jones and the Pottery Barn catalog. She lives in San Francisco, where she spends her private time reading magazines and record shopping, and her non-private time playing Nerf basketball with her husband and discussing their French bulldog.
 
sponsoring this Bitch Magazine mini-tour is the Chicago Chapter of the National Organization for Women; aka NOW
 
www.bitchmagazine.com

James Wagner reads from The False Sun Recordings
Wednesday, October 29th, 8PM
 
James Wagner’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He will be reading and siging his first book the false sun recordings.

Jennifer Bannan reads from Inventing Victor
Friday October 17 8:00pm
 
Join Jennifer Bannan for the release of her first book Inventing Victor. Inventing Victor is a collection of short stories ranging in scope and subject: A teenage girl with an imaginary boyfriend, a middle-aged suburbanite confronted by an unwelcome reminder of his youth, and a gay teacher in love with a married man all drift through the book?s the landscape. Many of the stories in Inventing Victor dwell on people seeking some kind of normalcy in their lives, but whose efforts to belong only alienate them from others?and themselves. In the title story, an insecure teenage girl tries to impress her popular best friend by inventing a larger-than-life relationship with an imaginary boyfriend. Her increasingly complex web of lies ensnares not only her but her friends as well, with disastrous consequences
 
“This collection is an almost tender evisceration of contemporary yuppie neuroses, and it mercifully doesn?t take place in New York City. Jennifer Bannan gets the details right,”
-Neal Pollack
 
For more info check out Jennifer?s weblog http://www230.pair.com/engelr/