Author Archive for liz

QUIMBY?S and FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS PRESENT:
 
BEASTS! With artists signing the new hardcover collection of nearly 100 illustrators depicting mythological and folkloric creatures.
 
BEASTS! book release signing with Dan Grzeca, Jason Robards, Little Friends of Printmaking, Anders Nilsen, Julie Murphy & Justin B. WilliamsFriday, March 9th, 7pm
 
Beasts! is a 200 page, full-color (plus Gold throughout), hardcover book from Fantagraphics Books. Ninety artists from the fields of rock posters, skate graphics, comics, children\’s books, fine art, etc. have each chosen a classic mythological or folkloric creature to illustrate. All of the depicted beasts have been thought at some time to exist (generally through a handful of eyewitnesses or as cultural stories). Each beast is accompanied by a brief description of the creature written by Paul Hughes, Felicia Gotthelf, Heidi Broadhead, or Rob Lightner. It was birthed/curated by Jacob Covey and marvelously edited by Karin Snelson. Beasts! is available Now!

Ben Tanzer and Steve LaflerWednesday, March 7th, 8:00 PMFREE
 
Join us as Ben Tanzer, Chicago writer, reads from debut novel Lucky Man. Cartoonist Steve Lafler reads & performs interpretive dance from the graphic novel 40 Hour Man.
 
Ben Tanzer\’s debut novel Lucky Man follows four friends from their final days of high school though their first couple of years out of college. Each has personal demons they are battling – anger, substance abuse, sexual identity, and detachment – and the novel is separated into four sections, with each section focusing predominantly on one of the friends and his individual struggles.
 
It is a story about friendship, growing-up and trying to move on. Interwoven throughout are explorations into dreams, the Twilight Zone, the Grateful Dead, and The Greatest American Hero. There are drugs, road trips, breakdowns, violence, and adultery. Fathers and sons try to make sense of their relationships and characters question what it means to know God. It is a quintessentially American tale, and at the end only one character remains on his feet. Whether this means he is lucky, or not, will need to be decided by the reader.
 
Ben Tanzer lives in Chicago where he shoots pool, dabbles in social work, compulsively watches High School Musical, and spends all sorts of quality time with his lovely wife and young sons. He has had work published in a variety of magazines and journals including Rated Rookie, Clamor, Punk Planet, Abroad View, Opium, THE2NDHAND, Thieves Jargon, The Truth Magazine, Chicago Parent, Third Coast Press, 20dissidents, and Caketrain.
 
Is it a career, or a series of really lame jobs? Stephen Beaupre (author) and Steve Lafler (cartoonist) pose this timeless question in Forty Hour Man, a hilarious saga of one working stiff\’s three-decade journey into the minimum wage heart of the American Dream. It\’s all here – from scrubbing a steakhouse floor with a toothbrush to going bust in the Internet boom. Every bad boss. Every crazy co-worker. All the more shocking because it\’s true!
 
Steve Lafler is the cartoonist behind BugHouse, Baja and Scalawag, a trio of graphic novels about bugs on drugs playing be-bop jazz, and the seminal indie comic book series Dog Boy, featuring a lad with a canine head on a zen-trickster rampage through Reagan-era America.
 
Both will sign books (both on Manx Media).