Archive for the 'readings' Category

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John Porcellino & Chris Fink Release Forage Like a Bear at Quimby’s, May 31st

Published on May 9, 2025 Closed

May ’25

7:00 pm

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Don’t miss John Porcellino (King-Cat) and Chris Fink (Add This to the List of Things That You Are) visiting Quimby’s to talk about Forage Like a Bear, their collaborative book of gentle micro-essays on nature, family, and life on Saturday, May 31st at 7pm!

This beautiful book by Chris Fink collects twenty of his short, luminous radio essays as heard on Northern Public Radio WNIJ FM in DeKalb, Illinois. Low-key and plainspoken, he explores quiet moments in nature and with family in a classic Midwestern style. It features whistling acorns, scribbling clams, gossipy geese, technicolor ducks, turkeys (including human ones), roving bands of chipmunks, chimneys, fires, chainsaws, lice, thin ice, approximately 30,000 blueberries, cars rolling uphill, the leaves of a mulberry tree drifting down, Peace Trail meanders, and maybe just maybe, a holy grail morel and more, all illustrated with graceful ink line drawings by comics luminary John Porcellino.

Porcellino will read (with slides) selections from recent issues of King-Cat, with Chris Fink reading afterwards from Forage Like a Bear. A Q+A and signing will follow. Books will be available for purchase.

Long-time friend of Quimby’s John Porcellino has been publishing King-Cat Comics since 1989. When he does events at Quimby’s he lovingly refers to us as the place where he does the first event on the tour to experiment, and we are therefore the “sacrifical pancake.” He runs Spit and a Half Distro and goes to the post office on most days. Follow him on Patreon +@johnporcellino on IG among other places.

Chris Fink is a professor of English at Beloit College and the editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal. He’s the author of two collections of short stories, Farmer’s Almanac: A Work of Fiction (Emergency Press, 2013/2023) and Add This to the List of Things That You Are (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). He’s a regular contributor to Northern Public Radio.

Forage Like a Bear (Bored Wolves, 2025) $18.00 – Lovingly printed on soft white paper with French flaps.

Yes! Quimby’s will stay open later for this event! Quimby’s is located at 1854 W. North Ave, Chicago, IL 60622. This event is free.

Find the Facebook event link here.

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Zine Club Chicago: An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping Collective Reading and Zinemaking Workshop, March 15th!

Published on March 1, 2025 0 Comments

Mar ’25

3:00 pm

Zine Club Chicago: An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping Collective Reading and Zinemaking Workshop
3 p.m. Saturday, March 15, 2025
Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North Ave.
Free!

This month, Zine Club Chicago is thrilled to welcome our friends at Thick Press for a celebration of their new book, An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping!

From “abundance” to “zinemaking,” An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping invites the reader to wander through a collection of interconnected entries on helping and healing by over 200 contributors from the worlds of social work and family therapy; art and design; body work and witchery; organizing and education; and more. Privileging co-construction over diagnosis, wisdom over evidence, collective healing over individual curejuyet, always blurring categories and embracing contradictions — this world-making collection reveals a pluriverse of helping practices grounded in love and freedom.

Please join us for Zine Club Chicago: An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping Collective Reading and Zinemaking Workshop, 3 p.m. Saturday, March 15, 2025 right here at our shop, 1854 W. North Ave. in Wicker Park. Free!

Erin Segal and Chris Hoff, two of the editors of An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, will be joining us, and contributors to the book will read selections from their entries. Our readers include Zine Club Chicago producer Cynthia E. Hanifin, Neil Horsky, and Noriko Martinez.

Zine Club Chicago also be hosting a zinemaking workshop, and you’re all invited to make a mini zine about your own radical helping and collective care practices! No prior zinemaking experience necessary.

All zinemaking materials will be provided. Please note that event seating is limited, and will be first-come, first-served. Zine Club Chicago is a mask-supportive environment; masks will be provided if you’d like to wear one.

About Thick Press: Care-givers, justice-seekers, and community-builders often find ourselves in the thick of human experience. Yet so many of the texts we produce rely on the thin logic of Western medicine and mainstream social science! What might happen if we grounded more texts in the arts? In critical theories? In spirituality? In lived experience? What might happen if we paid more attention to medium, form, and design?

Enter Thick Press, a collaboration between a social worker (Erin Segal) and a designer (Julie Cho).

We aspire to a practice that is loving, reflexive, playful, and collaborative. We worry about reproducing oppressive structures, but we’re not really that interested in critique. Above all, we want to make unusual books with others.

Inspired by artists’ books and zines, Thick Press publishes books that cross genres and disciplines. All our books relate to working or living in the thick of human experience.

Zine newbies and longtime enthusiasts alike are always welcome at Zine Club Chicago. This free event series is produced by Cynthia E. Hanifin and sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore. Anna Jo Beck is the creative force behind our visuals, and she also made the Zine Club Chicago Shout-Outs site, where folks can peruse and recommend zines we’ve discussed at our events.

Facebook event is here. More info on the Zine Club Chicago social media channels: @zineclubchicago

Image description: A colorful infographic flyer designed by Julie Cho that features the cover of the book An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, with text that reads: “An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping Collective Reading and Zinemaking Workshop; Zine Club Chicago at Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North Ave., Chicago IL 60622; Saturday, March 15, 3pm CST; For more information visit quimbys.com”

some LOVE Chapbook Release with Poetry Readings by Maria Mendoza Cervantes, Sophie Grimes, Nick Souder, and elizabeth s. Tieri 9/28

Published on September 6, 2024 0 Comments

Sep ’24

3:00 pm

some LOVE Chapbook Release
with Poetry Readings by Maria Mendoza Cervantes, Sophie Grimes, Nick Souder, and elizabeth s. Tieri.
Saturday, September 28th at 3 pm
at Quimby’s Bookstore (1854 W North Ave)

FREE & BYOB

Back to Print presents some LOVE the latest chapbook from poet, historienne and zinester extraordinaire elizabeth s. Tieri. Known for her sexy and succinct poems often on themes of heartbreak and other hurt, elizabeth has begun to balance the scale in celebration of friendship and love.

Joining her on the mic will be the phenomenal Chicago poets Maria Mendoza Cervantes, Sophie Grimes (City Structures) and Nick Souder (Trash Bird and the Kill Yr Idols reading series) all of whom were previously wrangled into the columns of Back to Print’s founding zine the deadline.

Please join us in celebration at Quimby‘s bookstore, where the limited-edition chapbook will be available for purchase alongside countless other independent & handmade zines.

For more info:
@GetBackToPrint
@QuimbysBookstore

Facebook Event Invite here!

Robbie Q. Telfer reads from new weird chapbook at Quimby’s 8/17

Published on July 18, 2023 0 Comments

Aug ’23

7:00 pm

Robbie Q. Telfer’s lonely line breaks: ChatRQT (Bottlecap Press), came about when Robbie Q. Telfer asked ChatGPT about his poetry, and it replied with entirely made up poem titles and synopses that Robbie Q. Telfer had not written. Telfer wants to defend ChatGPT’s integrity, so he has written some of the poems that it has said he has already written. Now ChatGPT is no longer a liar, but a prognosticator. This collection is proof that poetry is really very easy to write and all you need is a helpful robot to get you started. Welcome to the future of art!

“…a creative and inventive approach to writing poetry! It’s fascinating to see how you’ve used the fictional titles and synopses generated by our conversations as a starting point for your own poetic exploration.” –ChatGPT, AI Powered Chatbot, coauthor

Robbie Q. Telfer has performed and taught in hundreds of places in nine different countries. His work appears in places like SEISMA, Connecticut River Review, cream city review, Sinking City Review, The New Territory, and many others. He’s been an individual finalist at the National Poetry Slam and has a poetry collection from Write Bloody Publishing. He currently works for The Morton Arboretum and Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves trying to protect and celebrate what’s left of our wild spaces.

For more info: robbieqtelfer.com, bottlecap.press

Robbie will be joined by poet and teacher Tim Stafford. His work has appeared in The Offing, Taco Bell Quarterly, and 68to05. He is the editor of the Learn Then Burn anthology series (Write Bloody Books). His debut collection “The Patron Saint of Making Curfew” was published by Haymarket Books in 2021.

Here’s the Facebook Event Invite if you get into that type of thing.

Thursday, August 17th, 7pm – Free Event

Quimby’s Presents Joshua James Amberson’s Staring Contest Book Release + Antiquated Future Showcase Online on YouTube, June 14th

Published on May 12, 2023 0 Comments

Jun ’23

7:30 pm

Staring Contest: Essays on Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing) is the debut full-length essay collection from zinester, arts-and-culture writer, and founder of the Antiquated Future zine distro and record label, Joshua James Amberson. Deftly weaving together such disparate subjects as Bette Davis’s career, the daily challenges of eye contact, and his own decade-long saga of periodic eye injections, Amberson digs deeply into the physical and existential consequences of living with such uncertainty. Staring Contest is wise, generous, and—given the subject matter—surprisingly funny.

This event will also be a showcase of Chicago-based writers carried by Antiquated Future, including Anna Jo Beck (Biff Boff Bam Sock), Jim Joyce (Let it Sink), and Liz Mason (Caboose). It will air on the Quimby’s YouTube channel so no RSVP is necessary.

“Staring Contest is a jewel box of an essay collection: It takes a quotidian facet of experience—the human gaze—and considers it at length, revealing an overlooked world of ideas and resonances.” –Jordan Kisner, author of Thin Places: Essays from In Between

Joshua James Amberson is the author of the young-adult novel How to Forget Almost Everything, as well as a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, and the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. His words have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and Tin House, among others. joshuajamesamberson.com

About the other readers:

Anna Jo Beck has been making zines for over a decade, writing and designing how-to zines on skills like personal finance, habit tracking, and health insurance, as well as a film recommendation series called Mini Movie Marathon. She also runs Zine-A-Month, a zine by mail subscription. More info on her and her various zine projects can be found at annajobeck.com

Jim Joyce writes perzines like Let It Sink and others. A gentleman, he likes keeping his hands as sof’ as a frog’s belly.

Liz Mason publishes Cul-de-sac, Caboose, and Awesome Things. Her work has been in places like Broken Pencil, Punk Planet, The Zine Yearbook and the back of her friend’s toilets. She’s worked at Quimby’s Bookstore since 2001 in a state of perpetual arrested development. Find her at LizMasonIsAwesome.com + Etsy at LizMasonZines + @caboosezine at all the places.

For more info:

perfectdaypublishing.com

antiquatedfuture.com

Buy Staring Contest at Quimby’s

Wednesday, June 14th, 7:30pm CT

Online at youtube.com/quimbysbookstore

Want the Facebook invite to add it to your calendar? It’s here.