Punk Houses Event at Quimby’s!

Monday, October 22nd, 7:00 PM
FREE
Join Quimby’s in welcoming Abby Banks author of Punk Houses: Interiors in Anarchy, A 300 Page photo-documentary on American punk houses, edited by Thurston Moore.  Since this is Abby’s first book and the publisher is not sending her on book tour.  She decided to do it herself, with the help of some friends.

Not content for a typical reading. Abby and friends will screen a movie/slide show, talk about the book, and have live music by two acoustic acts “Johnny Hobo & the Freight Trains” and “Jerk Off Jack Off Frig Face”

Abby Banks is a photographer/visual artist.  She has contributed to Slug & Lettuce, and is a graduate of Goddard College, VT

Timothy Findlen is a musician & writer and has contributed to Bee’s Knee’s, several self released CDs, including Jerk Off Jack Off Frig Face (country), and a collaboration with Sunburned Hand of The Man.

Pat The Bunny, is a musician who fronts/is Johnny Hobo & The Freight Trains, and Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union.

The “punk house” may come in any number of forms. The most common type is often where a large group of like-minded punks cram into a house usually intended to accommodate two or three people, resulting in low rent and, thus, extended hours of leisure for the residents to pursue their true interests.

Punk House features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists’ studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces. In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors.

Eckhard Gerdes at Quimby’s!
Wednesday, October 24th, 7:00 PM
FREE

Join Eckhard Gerdes as he reads from and signs copies of his new novels “The Million-Year Centipede” (Raw Dog Screaming Press), “Przewalski’s Horse” (Red Hen Press), He also recently released a  CD of fiction readings “Scuff Mud” (JEF/CD Baby), and a new issue of “The Journal of Experimental Fiction” (Six Gallery Press).

Eckhard Gerdes earned an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but not before one teacher threatened to choke Eckhard to death for producing writing that was too innovative.  Eckhard’s true teachers have been the voices he heard through literature—Brautigan, Patchen, Joyce, Beckett, Federman, Barth, Jaffe, Burroughs, Acker, Moorcock, Calvino, Ionesco, and the amazing Arno Schmidt, to name a few—and the voices he has heard through other art forms, such as Clyfford Still, Picasso, Pollack, Kraan, Captain Beefheart, Firesign Theatre, Pere Ubu, Stockhausen, Webern, and, of course, the Doors.  These are the voices of the idiosyncratic.  They will be heard long after the weak voices have faded.

He lives near Chicago with two of his sons, Ludwig and Ulysses.  His oldest son, Sterling, is away at college at Georgia Tech.  Occasionally, Eckhard publishes The Journal of Experimental Fiction.  At times, he writes about literature for The Review of Contemporary Fiction,  American Book Review, and Electronic Book Review.  His fiction appears in various journals every now and then. Przewalski’s Horse and The Million-Year Centipede are his fifth and sixth published novel.   Two more, Nin & Nan and The Unwelcome Guest are scheduled for fall 2007 publication by Six Gallery Press.  Scuff Mud, the CD of reading accompanied by experimental musicians Shelf Life, is his first recording.

Ken Foster author of The Dogs Who Found Me
Saturday, October 20th, 7:00 PM
FREE

Join Ken Foster, author of The Dogs Who Found Me and special guest Elizabeth Crane, author of When the Messenger is Hot. For an evening or readings and dog hijinx.

Ken Foster will read a Chicago-based essay from his forth-coming collection DOGS I HAVE MET: And the People They Found.  As he reads, he will be interrupted by the people and dogs he has written about, as they attempt to correct his memory of the events.

Disaster-prone writer and reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster finds himself adopting an ever-growing collection of stray dogs, from a beagle abandoned in a New York City dog run to a pit bull in a Mississippi truck stop. Their circumstances offer a grounding counterpoint to his own misfortunes: the shock of New York City after 9/11, the evacuation of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and the day his heart nearly stopped for good. KEN FOSTER is the editor of two anthologies, including Dog Culture. His collection of short stories, The Kind I’m Likely to get, was a New York Times Notable Book. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. For more information, visit www.dogswhofoundme.com.