Archive for the 'Store Events' Category

John Sheppard and Evan ManderyWednesday, February 21st, 7:00 PM
 
SMALL TOWN PUNK by John SheppardTrapped in dreary Sarasota, Florida in the early 1980s–during Reagan’s “Morning in America,”–going to high school with junior fascists by day, working at Pizza Hut by night, his family a dysfunctional nightmare, 17-year old Buzz Pepper feels that nothing matters in life beyond drinking, drugs and punk rock.
 
As the country around him is becoming more conservative and corporate, and adulthood seems like the ultimate corrupt existence, Buzz can only find solace within a close-knit group of fellow disillusioned teens, which includes his devoted younger sister, Sissy. As they drive around in Buzz’s beat-up van, encountering redneck cops, mocking the local “geezers,” and wondering if there is any meaning in what seems to be a meaningless world, Small Town Punk perfectly captures how it is to be young, yet feel that you have no future.
 
John Sheppard currently lives in Chicago, and his fiction has been published in Bridge Magazine.
 
DREAMING OF GWEN STEFANI by Evan Mandery.Mortimer Taylor Coleridge is a unique man. With a mind of rare mathematical precision, he is obsessed with imposing order upon the chaos of every day life. A once brilliant student of evolutionary biology at Columbia University, he has turned his back on a promising academic career to devote his life to selling hot dogs at Papaya Queen. And Mortimer has used his keen intellect to become the quickest and most efficient of hot dog men, devising a numerical-based system to sell hot dogs which maximizes both time and effort.
 
One day while watching TV, Mortimer comes upon VH1, and his life is instantly transformed. While watching Behind the Music: No Doubt, he decides that he and Gwen Stefani are soul mates, destined to be together. When Mortimer discovers that her favorite food is a Papaya Queen hot dog, he dedicates his life to preparing for the day, which he knows will come, when Gwen Stefani will walk into the Papaya Queen where he works, order a frankfurter and fall in love with him.
 
Evan Mandery is the author of two works of nonfiction. Dreaming of Gwen Stefani is his first novel. He lives in New York City.
 
Both Authors will be present to read and sign their new books.

Michael McColly reads from The After Death RoomThursday, February 15th, 7:00 PM
 
Michael McColly begins his new memoir The After-Death Room in South Africa, where he traveled in 2000 to teach yoga to those in attendance at the International AIDS conference. But instead of teaching, McColly becomes the student to the scores of AIDS activists he meets in Africa who challenge him to take his spiritual beliefs off the mat and out into the harsh but life-affirming world of AIDS activism.
 
Part spiritual memoir, part investigative journalism, McColly?s riveting account of life inside the AIDS pandemic is one of the first ever written by an HIV+ writer. From Africa to Asia to neighborhoods in his own home of Chicago, McColly takes readers into struggling lives of Asian commercial sex workers, African-American prisoners, and Vietnamese street children as well as the spirited activism of Zulu traditional healers, Islamic mullahs of Senegal, African-American pastors, and Buddhists monks working with the dying in Thailand.
 
William Finnegan of the New Yorker and author of Cold New World calls The After-Death Room ?a revelation, an epic 21st century canvas on which the themes of courage, ingenuity, solidarity, and justice stand out just as boldly as those of cruel indifference and despair. . . McColly brings the global AIDS story home to Americans in a way no other writer has done.?
 
Michael McColly is the author of The World Is Round, a collection of immigrant narratives on coming to America. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, In These Times, The Sun, Ascent, and Salon.com. He?s a recipient of fellowship awards to MacDowell, Yaddo, Blue Mountain and Ragdale. He lives in Chicago where he teaches yoga and creative writing at Columbia College and Northwestern University.
 
Michael McColly will be joined by Lex Sonne and Jessica Tierney whom will read from original fiction at this event.
 

Saturday, January 27th, 8:00 PM
Arthur Magazine and Drag City PresentTrinie Dalton and Steve Krakow at Quimby?s!
 
Join us at Quimby?s as Arthur Magazine presents an evening of reading and discussion with Trinie Dalton and Steve Krakow.
 
For this event Trinie Dalton will read from her new novel, which isn\’t finished yet, about a witch and several of her monster friends. She?s in Illinois as a visiting writer at University Illinois Urbana Champaign, to celebrate the release of the new issue of their lit mag, Ninth Letter. Steve Krakow will be on hand to talk with Trinie Dalton about zines and other subcultural things.
 
Steve Krakow lives in Chicago and is the editor of Galactic Zoo Dossier and front man for Plastic Crimewave Sound. He is an organizer for the annual Million Tongues Festival at the Empty Bottle.
 
Trinie Dalton lives in Los Angeles. Her short story collection, WIDE EYED (Akashic) was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. She also co-edited DEAR NEW GIRL OR WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS (McSweeney\’s), an art/illustration book based on her archive of confiscated notes acquired while she taught high school. She writes about music for Arthur and the LA Weekly, writes film reviews for Amazon, and also writes catalogue essays for artists. Her work has appeared in magazines such as Bomb, Nerve, Purple, The Believer, and Ping Pong (Henry Miller Library\’s Journal). She has an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches Fiction at USC.