Monthly Archive for March, 2006

The real Brian Costello, Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs release party.Saturday, March 11th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Celebrate the release of Brian Costello?s first novel Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs with an evening of readings featuring:
 
Brian Costello teaches fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago, drums for the Functional Blackouts and hosts The Brian Costello Show with Brian Costello, America’s first and only live talk show. The Enchanters is his first novel.
 
Megan Stielstra is a writer, teacher and waitress living in Chicago. She edits Sleepwalk magazine and was artist-in-residence for Barefoot Productions where she created collaborative storytelling with musicians and filmmakers. She’s performed for Storyweek, Undershorts Film Festival, Piece by Piece and 2nd Story.
 
Gary Johnson is an accomplished writer, teacher and activist. He currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago.
 
All three will read from original work and Brian will sign copies of his new book, they’ll serve some sort of tasty beverage, and for the faithful, they might even dish out some cough syrup.

Stories Care Forgot eventTuesday, March 28th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
STORIES CARE FORGOT is an anthology of zines from and about New Orleans. For years the Crescent City’s thriving punk and zine community has produced beautifully rendered volumes of writing and artwork. Authors have poured their hearts out, sharing their thoughts and opinions on music, politics, bikes, gentrification, gender, class and, of course, the city itself. These tales come complete with the beauty, sadness, strangeness and eccentricity that has drawn people to New Orleans for so long. Featured are selections from over a dozen zines including Chainbreaker, Nosedive, Crude Noise, Rocket Queen, Emergency, I Hate This Part of Texas and Chihuahua and pitbull. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many of the originals of these zines have been lost or destroyed. This book serves not only as a presevation, but also, by donating author proceeds towards grassroots organizations, as a step towards rebuilding the city that inspired and shaped this body of work.
 
On hand for the event will be Ethan Clark Editor of Stories Care Forgot, & Chihuahua and Pitbull zine. He is also a sometimes contributor to Maximum Rock and Roll and the Asheville Global Report.
 

Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, & Anders Nilsen at Quimby?s!Saturday, February 25th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics Books, and the center for Cartoon Studies are proud to present comic artists; Sammy Harkham, Kevin Huizenga & Anders Nilsen on tour.
 
Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles on May 21st 1980. His comic strip Poor Sailor, originally published in Kramers Ergot 4, was subsequently included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2004 and has been published in French, Korean, and Italian. He was nominated in 2002 for an Ignatz Award for \’Promising New talent\’, and Kramers Ergot has been favorably reviewed and placed on numerous best of the year list\’s including the LA Weekly, Dazed And Confused, The Comics Journal, and Publisher\’s Weekly. Harkham currently lives in Los Angeles working on his comic series Crickets and the next volume of Kramers Ergot.
 
Kevin Huizenga was born in 1977 in Harvey, IL and spent most of his childhood in South Holland, IL, near Chicago. He began drawing comics in high school, Xeroxing his first issue (with friends) at the neighborhood Jewel Osco in 1993. In 2001 the Comics Journal named him \”Minimalism Cartoonist of the Year\” and called #14 of his Supermonster mini-comic series \”one of the best comics of any kind released in 2001.\” In 2001 he also started the Catastrophe Shop http://www.usscatastrophe.com, an online shop for self-published mini-comics Kevin won an Ignatz for his D+Q story GLENN GANES In the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #1. His new comic Or Else is the first series Drawn & Quartley have launched by a new cartoonist since OPTIC NERVE.
 
Anders Nilsen was born in rural Northern New Hampshire in 1973 and grew up on a steady diet of comics and stories, from Tintin and the X-Men to Raw and Weirdo. He attended college at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, studying art and doing political work followed by a stint in graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. After college a group of paintings he did developed into an artists book called The Ballad of the Two Headed Boy. The graphic nature of this book moved him toward comics. While Anders still makes other kinds of work, it\’s the comics that seem to have a life of their own, receiving two Ignatz nominations for Big Questions #4 in 2002 as well as a Xeric and several grants from the City of Chicago to help keep him making them. Nielsen is currently working on finishing Big Questions as well as a couple of further collections of strips from his sketchbooks. Dogs and Water is his new comic published by Drawn and Quarterly.