Zine Club Chicago is excited to announce that the April meeting will feature guest artist Sarah Becan, a local food fiend dynamo whose work has been a longtime staple at Quimby’s.
Zine newbies and longtime enthusiasts alike are always welcome at Zine Club Chicago, the city’s only book club-style event for people who read zines. This free monthly series is produced by Chicago Zine Fest/Midwest Perzine Fest organizer Cynthia E. Hanifin and hosted by Quimby’s Bookstore.
Sarah Becan is a comics artist, illustrator and designer, and the creator of “I Think You’re Sauceome”, a food-centric autobiographical webcomic. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Saveur Magazine, Eater.com, The Chicago Reader, and TruthOut.com.
She was awarded a Xeric Award and a Stumptown Trophy for Outstanding Debut for her first graphic novel, The Complete Ouija Interviews, and her work has twice been nominated for the Ignatz Award. Becan’s second graphic novel, Shuteye, was funded with a successful Kickstarter campaign and released in early 2012. In 2014, she wrote and illustrated Luna de Cuernos, a long form graphic story for Fifth House Ensemble’s spring 2014 concert series.
Becan illustrated the cookbook The Adventures of Fat Rice (2016), and Let’s Make Ramen!, a comic book cookbook, published July 2019 by Ten Speed Press.
Zine Club Chicago: Food Edition, at Quimby’s with Sarah Becan
Mathew Klickstein has spent the past two decades chronicling and (for good or ill?) helping to kick-start the 80s/90s Nostalgia Industry via his prolific spate of books, documentaries, articles, podcasts, and live events across the country. SLIMED! An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age (Penguin Random House) presented the first exhaustive history of the “First Kids Network,” has become the ultimate resource for those following in Klickstein’s footsteps, and was re-released as an updated “Fifth Anniversary Edition” for Nick’s recent 40th anniversary. Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons (w/ series writer Mike Reiss; Harper Collins) remains the only long-form “insider” story of the most beloved (and beforehand guarded) cartoon series of all time. Selling Nostalgia: A Neurotic Novel (Simon & Schuster) is an absurdist Fear & Loathing-esque coda to the now-waning “Nerd/Geek Culture” to which Klickstein has been a primary contributor. And the 80s sci-fi/horror inspired comic book series You Are Obsolete (AfterShock Comics) will be released in OGN/paperback edition April 21, exploring our current generational shift in a frightening, hopefully not too prescient way that left critics and fans alike glued to their pages and e-readers during the series’ initial five-issue Sept 2019-Jan 2020 run.
“Mathew Klickstein might be the geek guru of the 21st century.”
– Mark Mothersbaugh
The work of Mathew Klickstein has appeared in such outlets as: Wired, NY Daily News, Vulture, The New Yorker and countless regional and online publications worldwide. His two decades-plus of multi-platform storytelling has also led to: an impressive glut of non-fiction and fiction books authored for both major and independent publishers, podcasting (including his own series running for the past five years), guest lectures at various universities and arts/culture centers, as well as television and film work in partnership with such high-profile entities as: Sony Pictures, Food Network, National Lampoon, and Alamo Drafthouse.
Quimby’s is proud to be a sponsor of the 2020 Chicago Alternative Comics Expo [CAKE], a weekend-long celebration of independent comics, inspired by Chicago’s rich legacy as home to many of underground and alternative comics’ most talented artists– past, present and future. CAKE features comics for sale, workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions and more, CAKE is dedicated to fostering community and dialogue amongst independent artists, small presses, publishers and readers. More info at cakechicago.com.
CAKE 2020 will be held 6/13-6/14 11am-6pm at Broadway Armory (5917 N Broadway) in Edgewater.
A MAN HAS TROUBLE FALLING ASLEEP AND REFLECTS ON HIS LIFE, MARRIAGE, AND TIME ITSELF
In The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga delves deep into consciousness. What begins as a simple, distracted conversation between husband and wife, Glenn and Wendy Ganges—him reading a library book and her working on her computer—becomes an exploration of being and the passage of time. As they head to bed, Wendy exhausted by a fussy editor and Glenn energized by his reading and no small amount of caffeine, the story begins to fracture.
The River at Night flashes back, first to satirize the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and then to examine the camaraderie of playing first-person shooter video games with work colleagues. Huizenga shifts focus to suggest ways to fall asleep as Glenn ponders what the passage of time feels like to geologists or productivity gurus. The story explores the simple pleasures of a marriage, like lying awake in bed next to a slumbering lover, along with the less cherished moments of disappointment or inadvertent betrayal of trust. Huizenga uses the cartoon medium like a symphony, establishing rhythms and introducing themes that he returns to, adding and subtracting events and thoughts, stretching and compressing time. A walk to the library becomes a meditation on how we understand time, as Huizenga shows the breadth of the comics medium in surprising ways. The River at Night is a modern formalist masterpiece as empathetic, inventive, and funny as anything ever written.
Praise for The River at Night
Glenn Ganges in: The River at Night is perilously philosophical, goofily logical, lovingly wild. In Huizenga’s hands, an ordinary day reveals its acme holes of infinite regress and counterfactual calamity. A wonderful book, to read and read again.
Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Little Labours
Unexpectedly poignant and occasionally magical… While Huizenga’s architectural, fine-line style is clearly influenced by Chris Ware… the vast spaciousness of this surreal night flight is all his own. Glenn’s reveries will pull readers into multiple deserved rereadings.
A mix of John McPhee and Richard McGuire’s “Here,” The River at Night is about making the best of life when you know that the world’s been around for billions of years and will go on long after you, too, are gone. How wonderful to spend time with these sweet, gentle characters as they stare straight into the unfeeling universe and decide to make the best of it. A truly beautiful book.
Paul Ford, National Magazine Award-winning Technology Critic
Wow! I was not prepared for this: The River at Night is a surprising, beautifully rendered, mind-expanding, heartwarming exploration of what it means to be human, to have thoughts, to lie in bed all night after guzzling too much coffee, to follow your thoughts on a journey that maps the universe and makes light of the electrical activity of a brilliant mind. Kevin Huizenga is a kind of dreamer who gets us to think, to love what’s in our heads, to love what’s in his. Everybody will dig this book!
