County Highway Summer Reading Tour
Saturday, July 12, 2025 – 3:00 PM
in-person at Quimby’s Bookstore
1854 W. North Ave Chicago, IL 60622

Register to attend County Highway Summer Reading

Walter Kirn and Amanda Fortini will be reading from their work in County Highway with interspersed discussions, followed by an audience Q&A discussion!

County Highway is a magazine about America in the form of a 19th-century newspaper, started on a shoestring by three friends (David Samuels, Walter Kirn, and Ryan Baesemann) in the wake of the pandemic. They have since become the fastest growing print periodical in the country — earning an annual circulation of 150,000 copies barely one year after releasing thier debut issue.

The name County Highway is inspired by what they believe is the perfect-sized place for the enhancement of life and art. A county is a chunk of earth big enough to allow for a variety of human types, but small enough to get to know a decent number of your neighbors, where they come from, what they’re proud of, what they fear, what they smoke, what they drink, and what they love. The county where County Highway newspaper is located is somewhere between all those places, real and imaginary. It’s the scale of the place that’s important, and also the idea of traveling from one to another with an eye towards finding new answers to the founding American questions of who we are, and why we are here.

Dubbed “America’s Only Newspaper,” County Highway features hairy off-road adventures by some of America’s best and strangest writers; reports on the myriad of political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, both mentally and physically; essays about literature and art; and an entire section devoted to music. Offering a road-side banquet of American humor, common-speech, and social and political insights in every issue, County Highway prints six times each year for readers across all fifty states and Canada. Wherever there’s a stop sign, there’s a story.

Walter Kirn is a fiction writer, essayist, critic, and editor-at-large of County Highway. His novels include Up in the Air and Thumbsucker, both of which were made into major feature films. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, and countless other publications. His latest book is Blood Will Out, a memoir.

Amanda Fortini is a natural remedies columnist for County Highway. She divides her time between Livingston, Montana, and Las Vegas, Nevada, about which she is currently writing a book of essays, Flamingo Road. From 2021 to 2022, she did a nine-month flower essence apprenticeship and got certified as a practitioner.

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Suggested donation: $10
Venmo: @quimbysbookstore
Please include “County Highway” in the note!

Your generous donation directly supports artist honorariums and ensures the continuation of this program. We are so grateful for your support of local authors, publishers, creators, Quimby’s Bookstore, and DIY culture—we truly couldn’t do it without you!