Author Archive for liz

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Robert Jensen discusses his new book Citizens of the Empire

Published on April 25, 2004 0 Comments
Apr ’04
25
12:00 am

Robert Jensen discusses his new book Citizens of the Empire
Thursday, June 17th, 7:30 PM
 
As we approach the elections of 2004, U.S. progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of anti-war demonstrators glibly dismissed as a \”focus group,\” and with the collapse of political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and imperatives used to stifle protest ? \”Support the Troops,\” \”We Are the Greatest Nation On Earth,\” etc. ? a state of hopelessness and cynicism can become overwhelming.
 
In a plainspoken deconstruction of the dominant political rhetoric ?intentionally crafted to depress political discourse and activism ?, Citizens of the Empire probes deeply into the sense of disempowerment that has resulted from the Left?s inability to halt the violent and repressive course of post-9/11 U.S. policy. In this passionate and very personal exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world?s most powerful, affluent, and militarized nation in an era of imperial expansion, Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of the prevailing myths by using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions.
 
Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, among other books. He also writes for popular media, appears on syndicated talk shows regularly– including The O\’Reilly Factor with Bill O\’Reilly, and his opinion and analytic pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.
 
More info at: http://www.citylights.com/CLpubRE.html#citizens
FREE

An Evening with The Icarus Project

Published on April 23, 2004 0 Comments
Apr ’04
23
12:00 am

Walking the Edge of Insanity:
Navigating the World of Mental Health with Open Eyes and Important Questions.
An Evening with The Icarus Project
Thursday April 8th 8PM
 
As folks who generally feel alienated by mainstream culture and question conventional ideas of sanity, what does it mean to be struggling with traditional labels such as ?clinical depression,? ?bipolar disorder,? or ?schizophrenia?? How helpful is the modern medical view of mental disorders that revolves around drugs and psychiatry and how much of it is influenced by powerful pharmaceutical corporations, public funding cuts, and a society that equates economic productivity with health?
 
Come join an exciting discussion that is starting all over the country and is being orchestrated by Sascha Scatter and Ashley McNamara, the directors of The Icarus Project ? a group of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder who are finding new language for all the different experiences that get labeled ?mental illness.?
Come celebrate the release of our little book, Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness: a Reader and Roadmap of Bipolar Worlds, which is a compilation of stories and lessons from brave and misunderstood folks who rarely have the chance to speak and whose insights are going to end up changing the world.
 
Ashley McNamara is an artist, writer, farmer, dreamer, traveler, teacher and mental health activist diagnosed with bipolar disorder who has been roaming around the country putting together zines and editing a book for The Icarus Project. These days her most accurate address is the license plate of her truck, but before taking off for the great wide open with a horde of art supplies and lots of good food she was known to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and grow exceptional lettuce.
 
Sascha Altman DuBrul (aka Sascha Scatter) is a writer and activist who grew up in the New York City squatter subculture and spent years playing in punk bands, riding freight trains, working on farms, and writing political adventure stories about his travels from the forests blockades of the Pacific Northwest to the jungles of Southern Mexico. Sascha has been locked up in psych wards involuntarily three times for losing his mind and is diagnosed classic ?Bipolar I with psychotic tendencies,? which in his mind doesn?t quite capture the essence of the dilemma, but he?s working on creating new and better language to talk about it.
 
for more info check out www.theicarusproject.net

An Evening with the Blithe House Quarterly

Published on April 22, 2004 0 Comments
Apr ’04
22
12:00 am

An Evening with the Blithe House Quarterly
Friday, June 18th, 7:00 PM
 
Join host: Aldo Alvarez, executive editor and publisher, Blithe House Quarterly as he presents a reading of short fiction by authors appearing in the all-Chicago Summer issue of Blithe House Quarterly, an online journal of LGBT short fiction. Event readers Include: Dave Awl, Kurt Heintz, Karen Lee Osborne, K.R. Randen and Yvonne Zipter
 
Aldo Alvarez is the author of Interesting Monsters: Fictions. Aldo founded Blithe House Quarterly in 1997 and currently serves as its Executive Editor and Publisher.
 
Dave Awl is the author of What the Sea Means: Poems, Stories and Monologues 1987-2002. He is the founder of The Pansy Kings performance group and a ten-year veteran of The Neo-Futurists\’ fringe theater smash Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.
 
Kurt Heintz is a writer, performer, and new media artist whose output grows from contemporary video art, performance poetry, poetry video, and electronic literature. He is
founder of the e-poets network.
 
Karen Lee Osborne is the author of the novels Carlyle and Hawkwings the editor of The Country of Herself: Short Fiction by Chicago Women and coeditor, with William Spurlin, of Reclaiming the Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest
 
KR Randen is a 24 year old writer living in Chicago, IL. While short stories are his mainstay, he performs on stage; most recently at the Queer is Folk Festival.
 
Yvonne Zipter is the author of the nonfiction books Ransacking the Closet and Diamonds Are a Dyke\’s Best Friend, the nationally syndicated column \”Inside Out,\” and the critically acclaimed poetry collection The Patience of Metal.
 
Blithe House Quarterly was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 2000. The GLAAD Media Award recognizes the \”fairness, accuracy, quality, originality and impact of media representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community\”.
Check them out on-line at: www.blithe.com
FREE

The 2nd Hand release event

Published on April 16, 2004 0 Comments
Apr ’04
16
12:00 am

The 2nd Hand celebrates the release of issue #13
Live at Quimby?s
 
The following is a direct transmission for the editors of The 2nd Hand:
 
For Apes, By Apes
 
Between adopting new exercise routines and trying to ignore the empty vessel on television, we have managed the 13. You know you want it. Join The 2nd Hand (www.the2ndhand.com) at Quimby?s on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30 pm to celebrate the release of The 2nd Hand broadside number 13, featuring: new fiction (I hadn’t slept like a normal human being for months.) by John L. Sheppard (from our 27th state); our co-conspirator Mickey Hess (Late at night where there used to be static, and I said two-for-one on wheels and rims and we’ll throw in mudflaps too) from Louisville-a town we will always cherish for giving the world Slint; and Chicago’s Erika Mikkalo (Someone outside the circle shouted, “I can play taps on a tuba!”).
 
Helping us celebrate are: resident 2nd Hand weather poet Susannah Felts; Gretchen Kalwinski, who seems to understand much about the nature of waiting; and your dear 2nd Hand editors, Todd Dills (author of For Weeks Above the Umbrella) and Jeb Gleason-Allured (author of his own despair).
 
BYOB. You heard us.

Nikki Pill reads from Singing and Then

Published on April 10, 2004 0 Comments
Apr ’04
10
12:00 am

Nikki Pill reads from her novel Singing and Then at Quimby?s
March 27th 7:00PM
 
A unique and experimental novel, Singing, and Then explores the realms of Earth, Heaven and Hell from the perspective of angels, mortal men and the Prince of Lies himself.
 
A new angel inexplicably appears in Heaven. At the same time all the souls in Heaven, Hell and Earth disappear. While Heaven searches for the lost souls, two damaged spirits wander the Earth. Angels, spirits and mortal men combine forces in a surprising chain of events. They uncover an ugly conspiracy: innocent angels imprisoned, a mysterious illness that devours those closest to God, and a plot to start a second war between Heaven and Hell.
 
Nikki M. Pill graduated from Lake Forest College with a bachelors’ degree in English and Philosophy. She names Jeanette Winterson, William Faulkner, Steven Brust, and Neil Gaiman as her biggest literary influences, and hopes that all the Sartre she read isn\’t counteracting them too much. Nikki is also widely known and admired as the Vipe Girl, creator of Vipe.org, a feminist web site that critiques our culture’s unrealistic beauty standards.
 
Singing and Then is her first published novel, and she is currently working on her second, as well as collaborating on a screenplay with the inimitable Bob Cappel.
 
More info is at: www.singingandthen.com