McSweeney?s presentsSalvador Plascencia and Paul La FargeMonday, August 15th, 7:00 PMFREE
 
THE PEOPLE OF PAPER BY SALVADOR PLASCENCIA After his wife leaves him, Federico de la Fe and his daughter Little Merced depart the town of Las Tortugas, Mexico and head for Los Angeles. There, with the aid of a local street gang and the prophetic powers of a baby Nostradamus, they engage in an epic battle to find a cure for sadness. Mechanical tortoises, disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, a woman made of paper, and Rita Hayworth are a few of the players whose destinies intertwine in this story of war and lost love. The People of Paper is simultaneously a father-daughter immigration story, a wildly inventive reimagining of Southern Californian mythology, and an exploration of the limits of fiction. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects.
 
Salvador Plascencia was born in 1976 in Guadalajara, Mexico. Plascencia?s mother was a seamstress, his father a factory worker who moved frequently between California and their home in Jalisco. Growing up at his grandparents? farm, his extended family passed along a wealth of stories, some of which formed the inspiration for The People of Paper. His family eventually settled east of Los Angeles in the city of El Monte when Plascencia was eight years old. At the time, he spoke no English. Salvador Plascencia holds a BA in English from Whittier College and an MFA in fiction from Syracuse University. He received a National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Award in Fiction in 1996 and the Peter Nagoe Prize for Fiction in 2000. In 2001 he was awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, the first fellow in fiction. The People of Paper is Plascencia?s first novel. His first published fiction appeared in McSweeney?s No. 12.
 
THE FACTS OF WINTER BY PAUL POISSEL TRANSLATED BY PAUL LA FARGE
Paul Poissel was not born in 1848. As a young man, he did not set out to become the greatest Turkish architect in Paris. He did not fail to become the greatest Turkish architect in Paris. He never became a poet, or invented puzzles for an illustrated magazine. In 1904, he did not write this book, The Facts of Winter. Paul La Farge has translated (from the original French) this collection of dreams?funny, haunting, enigmatic?all dreamed by people in and around Paris in 1881. La Farge?s afterword investigates the Facts? creation, uncovering startling revelations, unknown truths, and new falsehoods.
 
La Farge is a frequent contributor to McSweeney?s and is the author of Haussmann, or the Distinction, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Artist of the Missing, winner of the California Book Award. He is also a leading scholar on the work of Paul Poissel, one of the least known of the little-known French ?tiny metaphysician? writers of the late 19th century.

The Secret Lives of Librarians with Jenna Freedman, Travis Fristoe, Jenn Phillips-Bacher, Keith Helt, Celia Perez
 
Monday June 27th 7:00PM
 
25,000 library workers will invade Chicago the last weekend in June to attend the American Library Association Annual Conference. Five librarians will break away from the madness of the McCormick Place on Monday, June 27, 2005 to share their passion for those photocopied, cut and paste productions we all know and love–zines! Join this group of zine-making librarians as they read from their zines and reveal the inner lives of librarians that give lie to the stereotype of the repressed bun-wearing, Dewey Decimal obsessed shusher. Donations to benefit the Alternative Press Center are welcomed!
 
Bios:
Jenna Freedman, the Coordinator of Reference Services at Barnard College Library in NYC, NY, started a zine collection at the college last year. She is also a member of the library worker activist group Radical Reference that supports activists and independent journalists “online and in the street.” Her zine is the Lower East Side Librarian Winter Solstice Shout-Out.
 
Learning at a tender age that astronauts had to have perfect vision, Travis Fristoe accepted his bespectacled fate and instead devoted himself to libraries, amateur protest music & salvaging discarded bikes. He’s been doing zines for half his life now, which seems a really long time.
 
Riot Librarrrian busted out from the minds of two underwhelmed and underworked library school students, Jenn Phillips-Bacher and Sara Pete. Armed with typewriters, glue sticks, and a novice’s moxie, the girls pounded out Issue #1. Team RL left the publishing world for real jobs in Library Land once the zine hit the stands and degrees were in hand. Jenn Phillip-Bacher currently works as a reference librarian at Skokie Public Library (IL).
 
A librarian-in-training, Keith Helt feels weird about bios in general, but has been making zines since he was a wee lad of 15. When he’s not learning how to archive, he’s fretting about his band, the Rories and the long overdue next issue of his zine, Flotation Device.
 
Inspired by “Sassy” magazine, punk rock, and the the silly notion that other people care to read all about her business, Celia Perez started making zines many years ago. She still can’t figure out layouts to save her life, but she continues to publish zines including I Dreamed I Was Assertive, and most recently, Skate Tough You Little Girls, a zine about women in skateboarding. She is a reference and instruction librarian at Harold Washington College in Chicago where, in addition to helping students find information, she spends much of her time asking them to turn off their cell phones.
 
Links:
Alternative Press Center (http://www.altpress.org/)
Barnard College Library Zine Collection (http://www.barnard.edu/library/zines/)
Radical Reference (http://www.radicalreference.info/ALA)

Book Event forWOMEN AND SOCIALISMEssays on Women’s LiberationBy Sharon SmithSaturday June 25th 4PM
 
Join Sharon Smith as she discusses WOMEN AND SOCIALISM (Haymarket Books 2005). Three decades have passed since the heyday of the women’s liberation movement, yet women remain oppressed the world over. Mainstream feminism has shifted steadily rightward since the 1970s–embracing Bush’s war on Afghanistan in 2001, and even endorsing Democratic Party efforts to seek “common ground” with abortion opponents after John Kerry’s defeat in 2004. This approach has proven disastrous for women, from the US to Afghanistan.
 
This collection of essays examines these issues from a Marxist perspective–addressing the reasons why women are oppressed, the different nature of oppression between women of different social classes, and the basis for building a movement that can end women’s oppression, along with all other forms of inequality.
 
“Sharon Smith’s work, spanning three decades of events affecting women, provides a valuable and uncommon perspective on the oppression and liberation of women. Her understanding of the grounding of women’s oppression in class society, her vision of solidarity among women and men, and her critique of ideologies of seism and the rollback of the women’s movement are tremendously important contributions to women’s studies. More than that, the accessible writing and incisive assessment of the movement’s gains and losses are indispensible for activists for women’s liberation today.”–Dana Cloud, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, University of Texas, Austin
 
Sharon Smith is the author of numerous articles on women’s liberation and the US working class. Her writings appear regularly in Socialist Worker newspaper, Counterpunch website, and the International Socialist Review.
 
Haymarket Books is a non-profit, progressive book distributor and publisher based in Chicago; that has relationships with various social justice and activist campus-based groups in the city.