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Stencil Pirates Book Event with Author Josh MacPhee Saturday, July 31st, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
Josh MacPhee has just released Stencil Pirates: A Global Survey of Street Stenciling, published by Soft Skull Press. Featuring an exhaustive collection of over a thousand photographs, Josh MacPhee\’s unique survey brings together the complex history of the street stencil with the boldest and most beautiful paint work from around the world. From three-color anti-capitalist symbolism in Australia to fly-by-night hip hop tags in Ohio, from portraiture in Paris to feminist declarations of self-defense in San Francisco, from environmentalist wheat pasting in Texas to radical circus promotion in Chile, the enormous scope of this often anonymous art form is celebrated and brought into critical focus.
 
Stencil Pirates places street graffiti within the larger pantheon of public expression. From political to abstract and purely aesthetic ?from tagging to public announcements ? street stencils have remade the way pedestrians, artists, and even corporations think about public space. Whether as part of the anti-gentrification struggles in New York or as a powerful tool during the recent general uprising in Argentina, stencils are shown challenging not just ideas but entire sensibilities.
 
Josh MacPhee is an artist based in Chicago, IL whose work revolves around themes of radical politics and public space He also organizes the Celebrate People\’s History Poster Series and runs a small radical art distro at www.justseeds.org.
 
More info is at
www.stencilpirates.org
www.justseeds.org
www.softskull.com

Hey Kidz! Book Event with Author
Anne Elizabeth Moore and special guests
Christa Donner and Jason Kucsma
Thursday July 29th 8PM
 
Hey Kidz! is out on Soft Skull?s new Red Rattle line for young adults. A guidebook to media literacy and artistic response, Hey Kidz! serves as a respectful, straightforward how-to manual for youth who have a problem with
the way the world works, but don?t yet know how to articulate their demands, nor achieve their goals, for world change. Illustrated by underground cartoonist Megan Kelso, this book will give any young adult a solid grounding in media systems and provide them with hands-on, easy-to-follow instructions to become radical card-carrying activists. (It will even provide instructions on how to make those cards, and where to hide them during border-crossings.) With emphases on community-building, teamwork, historical research, and self-expression, this book will even prove useful for improving those skills so sought after by educational testing-based programs.
 
Christa Donner is the editor and publisher of Ladyfriend Zine. She’s also a nationally-exhibited visual artist who uses large-scale drawings and small-press comics to explore issues of women’s health and body image. Whenever she can, Donner accompanies her art with workshops focusing on self-publishing, body image, art and activism. She has led programs for Planned Parenthood, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ladyfest East, and numerous other organizations and institutions.
 
For more about Christa’s projects visit www.christadonner.com.
 
Jason Kucsma is the co-founder and publisher of Clamor Magazine, an award-winning bi-monthly that celebrates the revolution of everyday life. Clamor won “Best New Magazine” in Utne’s Alternative Press Awards its first year and has been nominated for “Best Social/Cultural Coverage” every year since. In the summer of 2002 he was featured in Utne as one of 30 young visionaries under 30 who are changing the world. Jason is also the co-publisher of the Zine Yearbook, a yearly collection of the best art and writing from the underground press that is now in its 8th year. He currently resides in Toledo, Ohio’s Old West End and is secretly very happy the rest of the country hasn’t figured out how great the midwest is.
 
For more, visit www.clamormagazine.org.
 
Anne Elizabeth Moore?s upcoming Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People will be available from Soft Skull?s Red Rattle line for young adults in July 2004. Her work has previously appeared in Punk Planet, The Onion, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Chicago Reader, Clamor, The Progressive, The Comics Journal, and The Stranger, as well as in over 30 single-shot zines. She considers herself, however, a literary activist, which means she would far prefer you go do something about her work than read more of it. From Seattle, Anne is heading up the Radical Education Roadshow, a zillion-city reading and workshop tour in conjunction with several brilliant alternative media makers in support of Hey Kidz! and alternative media in general.
 
Find out more at www.heykidz.org.

Readers from SPEC (Self Publishers Events Council) Chicago.
Monday June 28th 7:30pm
 
Part of Music with Meaning 5. For complete info: foulinc.com/mwm

Kill Your Idols event with editors Jim DeRogatis and Carmel Carrillo plus contributors live at Quimby?s
Friday, July 16th, 8:00 PM
FREE
 
In KILL YOUR IDOLS: A NEW GENERATION OF ROCK WRITERS RECONSIDERS THE CLASSICS thirty-five of the best rock writers of Generations X and Y each weigh in on an album that’s universally considered “a classic”?but which they think sucks. Kill Your Idols is edited by Jim DeRogatis and Carm?l Carrillo.
 
Jim DeRogatis is the author of MILK IT! COLLECTED MUSINGS ON THE ALTERNATIVE MUSIC EXPLOSION OF THE ’90S and TURN ON YOUR MIND:FOUR DECADES OF GREAT PSYCHEDELIC ROCK. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the year the Beatles arrived in America, Jim DeRogatis began voicing his opinions about rock ?n? roll shortly thereafter. He is currently the pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and a contributor to Spin.
 
The event will be a reading and along with Editors Jim DeRogatis (Chicago Sun-Times) and Carm?l Carrillo; contributing essayists Dave Chamberlain (New City), Allison Augstyn (Pioneer Press), Chris Martiniano, Bobby Reed, Chrissie Dickinson, Bob Mehr (Chicago Reader) and Anders Smith Lindall will also read and agitate.
 
More info is at: www.jimdero.com & www.soundopinions.net

Punk Planet Presents BETTER READ THAN DEAD
Friday, June 4th, 8:00 PM
 
BETTER READ THAN DEAD
A night of independent readings by independent thinkers
 
Featuring Joe Meno (Hairstyles of the Damned)
Bee Lavender (Mamaphonic)
Todd Dills (All Hands On: A the2ndhand reader)
Anne E. Moore (Hey Kids! Buy this Book!)
Megan Stielstra (Sleepwalk magazine)
 
Music provided by DJs Mat Daly and Nick Butcher
 

Missy Suicide and the SuicideGirls live at Quimby?s
Friday, July 2nd, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
What began as a personal homage to classic pin-up photography in 2001, has grown into phenomenon that intelligently captures new attitudes and interests of culture with a positive approach towards sexuality.
 
Since taking those first few photos of her friends who happened to be tattooed, pierced and uniformly anti in their attitudes towards the established notions of beauty, founder Missy Suicide has been propelled to the forefront of a global community and a budding main stream examination of beauty and sexuality.
 
This event is a release celebration for the new SuicideGirls coffee table book that displays the women of SuicideGirls over the past few years. SUICIDEGIRLS (published by Feral House) is 124 pages and displays over 200 fun, sexy and artful color photos that has come to define the women of SuicideGirls, the book also contains journal entries selected from the site and an introduction by Missy Suicide.
 
In addition to Missy, 8 SuicideGirls will be present to sign copies of the book and possibly perform a short set of their punk rock inspired Burlesque Act
 

Perpetual Motion Roadshow #13
starring Nick Mamatas, Frank Duff and Jasmin Dreame Wagner.
Thursday, June 21st, 8:00pm
 
Nick Mamatas writes all sorts of stuff, from horror novels to case studies of South Korean urban insurrections. His stuff has appeared in the Village Voice, Razor, The Whirligig, and Disinformation Books anthologies. He’ll be reading from the hate mail he received for his first novel, the Keruoacian/Lovecraftain novel MOVE UNDER GROUND.
More info at http://kynn.com/wwnkd
 
Frank Duff is not a well-educated, well-bred or even well-behaved person. This hasn’t however prevented him from achieving various degrees of success as a computer programmer, bicycle messenger and novelist. As a rookie roadshower, Frank Duff will be making harsh indictments against the world and everyone in it in the form of spoken word poetry and also reading from his punk rock novel Lysergically Yours.
More info at http://frankduff.com
 
Jasmine Dreame Wagner likes Clydesdale horses and hitchiking around developing countries. Unfortunately, there are few ponies in Brooklyn, and New York City is certainly well-developed, so she has to travel quite frequently in order to satiate her needs. Thanks to the Roadshow, she’ll be bringing her stories on the road, reading from her zine, Songs About Ghosts, and sharing tales about abandoned Soviet military bases in Estonia, the wildflowers of Nova Scotia, and where to find the best pizza and punkhouse shows in Brooklyn. Her interests include falling in love, telling the truth, and you.
More info at http://songsaboutghosts.com
 
FREE

An Evening with Lady Churchill?s Rosebud Wristlet
Tuesday, June 1st, 7:30 PM
 
A Night of Readings and Perhaps More from the pages of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
featuring:
 
Hannah Wolf Bowen is a Philosophy major, an assistant editor for the Fortean Bureau, and the person of an ungrateful (yet adorable) horse and a neurotic (yet adorable) dog. Some of her stories have found homes. Others have not. These things happen.
 
John Trey attempts to exploit whatever meager talents he possesses from an old house in a suburb in the Midwest, where he keeps all brooms locked safely in a closet. When not writing, reading, or critiquing, he often can be found playing with his daughter, listening to jazz, or pondering the mysteries of invisibility.
 
Dave Schwartz’s “The Ichthymancer Writes His Friend with an Account of the Yeti’s Birthday Party”, was the lead story in LCRW 13. Schwartz is the reincarnation of a famous dancing bear who once entertained thousands of Bolivian mine workers. He is indigenous to the Midwestern United States, and traces of his spoor have appeared in On Spec and Flashquake.org. He prefers tea, thank you. He appears on the edge of publishing a zine.
 
Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link (Stranger Things Happen) publish the zine, Lady Churchill\’s Rosebud Wristlet and run Small Beer Press. They read an awful lot (Kelly quickly, Gavin not so) and write sometimes. They have driven here from Northampton, MA. Apropos of nothing, but we also have 2 new books coming out, 2 new chapbooks, and a new issue of our zine. People ask why is the press called Small Beer Press? We just like beer!
 
More info is at: http://www.lcrw.net/lcrw/index.htm
 
FREE

Musical group PALcelebrates the release of their new 7″ recordwith a night of music and readings
Friday, June 25th, 8:00 PM
 
The musical group PAL, will be celebrating the release of Audio Peace Treaty a new seven inch record with a delightful night of music and reading.
 
Musing on the subject of rock and roll will be Joe Meno, Katherine Raz, Keith Helt, Seth Emily, Nathan Cowing (of Pegasvs), and Erica Burkhart (of the Sunday Toredowns). The band PAL will play an exclusive acoustic rending of the 7″ and the Jugglers of Death
will try not to burn the store down.
 
You will like it!
 
More info is at: www.palpalpal.net
 

The 2ndHand celebrates the release of All Hands On
Live at Quimby?s
Thursday, July 1st, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
ALL HANDS ON: A THE2NDHAND Reading is a reading, indeed, a performance of works included in ALL HANDS ON: A THE2NDHAND Reader, the newly released anthology of the best work published in Chicago\’s broadsheet and online weekly for new writing, THE2NDHAND. Contributors to the book perform, along with the editors and various guest, whose simian hi-jinx can be anticipated, but not announced. We\’re keeping our ears up.
 
JOHN H. MATTHEWS has had fiction published in Inkburns, The Whirligig, and
Pindeldyboz and used to play drums for Six Slug Vacation. He lives in
Chicago.
 
BRIAN COSTELLO spent his unmemorable (to him) infancy in Creve Coeur, Missouri; his idyllic (to him) childhood in Peoria, Illinois; his dramatic (to him) adolescence in unincorporated Seminole County, Florida; a lost year (to all concerned) in Gainesville, Florida; AND his enchanted (to a few maybe, if not many, some though, definitely) adulthood in Chicago, Illinois. He was first published in THE2NDHAND, and has since been published in New City Chicago, Bridge, Sleepwalk, Hair Trigger, Horizontal Action, Maximumrocknroll, and others. He plays drums for the Functional Blackouts, and hosts a live talk show at the Empty Bottle. We had a chance to meet up with Brian at Spago Chicago, where he was flirting with Amanda Puck while wolfing down bruschetta and calamari appetizers. When asked \”Are you still working on your appetizers?\” he answered, \”Yes. Yes I am.\”
 
TODD DILLS lives in Chicago and is author of For Weeks Above the Umbrella, a collection published in 2002. His work has appeared in various publications, including Little Engines, Pindeldyboz, New City, the Chicago Reader, and others. He is the founding editor of THE2NDHAND.
 
JEB GLEASON-ALLURED dreams in heavy metal and describes his stories as postconscious. Yes. He lives in Chicago and is an editor at THE2NDHAND.