By Brian Hieggelke

If we’re living in the most creative and fertile period in the history of comics, Daniel Clowes and Seth are two of a handful of cartoonists largely responsible for it. Clowes, born and raised in Chicago before relocating to California, is best known for his long-running “Eightball” comic, which spawned several graphic novels (and a couple movies), including “Ghost World” and “Ice Haven,” as well as last-year’s “Wilson.” The Canadian Seth came to fame with his long-running comic “Palookaville,” as well as the recent graphic novels “George Sprott” and “Wimbledon Green.”

This month, publisher Drawn and Quarterly is releasing Clowes’ “The Death-Ray” and Seth’s “The G.N.B. Double C: The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists” and, in the tradition of the old superhero team-ups, is sending them on tour together, with a stop this week at Oak Park’s Unity Temple. In that spirit, we conducted a three-way interview in advance of their visit. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing about 9/11 once felt so much stranger. The image of the Twin Towers falling is so indelibly marked in the American consciousness that initially it may have seemed commenting on it was excessive or incompatible. Yet, with the passing of ten years, an image once unilaterally perceived in the West—“we are all Americans now,” as the French newspaper Le Monde famously printed—has become burdened with the history that sprouted from it.

Given the event’s transforming meaning, Granta’s “Ten Years Later” essentially skirts the issue of what exactly occurred ten years ago. While the New Yorker chose the bizarrely nostalgic route of scrapping together what amounts to an e-book time capsule of its coverage immediately following the attacks, per their M.O. Granta has chosen a considerably riskier approach. Out of its sixteen essays, only one addresses September 11 directly. The rest cover, according to the blurb, the “complexity and sorrow of life since 11 September 2001.” Read the rest of this entry »

Marc Smith

By Mike Gillis

If slam poetry is still the religion it once was, then the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge is its cathedral. Of course, like the best of lounges, the Green Mill is the opposite of a church. Rather than natural light and sanctity, it conjures sea grottos, manmade dimness, embellished curves.

On a recent Saturday in Wrigleyville, the rock club Metro served as a surrogate to slam poetry founder Marc Smith’s traditional pulpit. It served quite well. If a little less cavernous, the Metro was no less ornate and grotesquely organic than the Green Mill. Should the low-key ambiance have suggested slam has lost its edge, though, the pantheon assembled for the twenty-fifth anniversary of slam poetry immediately extinguished such doubts. Read the rest of this entry »

Two hours before the show, there is already a line. Martyrs’ isn’t a large venue, and people collect on the sidewalk outside as they wait for their IDs to be checked. Inside, the bar is fairly spacious, and most of the few chairs are already filled despite the early hour. The lighting is so dim a few techies have to use flashlights to set up the stage, which is (fortunately for them) bare except for a microphone, an easel and a sign proclaiming “The Moth StorySLAM.” The last seats are taken by a little after six, and the venue is sold out by 7pm or 7:30pm. Food and drink rush past in the arms of the busy wait staff, and the noise remains at a dull roar until an organizer comes to the microphone. The bar quiets, and she asks for previous attendees of the StorySLAM to serve on the judging panel.

The Moth began its storytelling competition in New York in 1997, and came to Chicago in 2009. The rules are simple. The ten competitors, selected from volunteers that night, each have five minutes to tell their stories, which must relate to the monthly theme—fame, in this case. Three teams of judges score each story.

A little past eight, Brian Babylon takes the stage to enthusiastic applause. Host, extra storyteller, standup comic and literal cheerleader, Babylon encourages the audience to “go crazy” for every contestant, and brings the first storyteller onstage to a gospel rendition of “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.” Read the rest of this entry »

Puddin'heads at the Galway Arms

By Mike Gillis

Matthew Edwards stood in the Galway Arms Irish Pub in Lincoln Park, raised a black glass of stout, and proposed a toast to a boisterous crowd of more than forty on this June 16:

“To James Joyce himself, who, depending on your religious affiliation, is either up in heaven or down in the dirt, laughing his ass off at us for revering his work year after year.”

This is Bloomsday, the annual celebration of the single twenty-four-hour period during which “Ulysses” occurs. It’s a work that attracts such overwhelming interest that it inspired four eclectic gatherings around Chicago this year, and many times that worldwide.

At Puddin’head Press’ seventh annual reading at the Galway Arms, as a planned cast of novelists, musicians, publishers and actors took their turns performing edited sections of the book, the reasons for attendance were scattered. While some were dragged along by bibliophile friends, others, like Lindsey Wallem, have been searching for such a celebration in Chicago for years.

The clear connection among the varied attendees at the Galway, however, was a genuine sense of excitement. Latecomers searched desperately for chairs before taking seats on the floor or leaning against walls. Members of the audience quoted lines along with the performers. Laughter rang out through the second-floor room after choice sections. Read the rest of this entry »

The Poetry Foundation has a mission to celebrate poetry and present it to the largest possible audience. Almost a hundred years since its inception in 1912 as Poetry magazine, the foundation carries on these principles by providing poetry a new home when its new public building opens this month.

“Designing a building from the ground up just for poetry was a huge opportunity,” says Poetry Foundation president John Barr. The two-story building, a 22,000-square-foot structure, is one of only three public spaces in the nation built for the advancement of poetry. The location will include the offices of the foundation and magazine, along with a multipurpose performance space acoustically designed for the spoken word, a public garden, a library holding a collection of 30,000 volumes, and an exhibition gallery. The structure’s aesthetics were an important part of the design. Local architect John Ronan, Barr says, “took one art form, poetry, and translated it into another one, architecture.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pitching aces Margo Gremmler and Adam Sleper

“John, we all like climax,” David Henry Sterry instructs one of the twenty Pitchapalooza contestants at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest. “We wanna feel like we should smoke a cigarette when we’re done.” The issue of climax joins comp books, language that reflects the narrative and indicating the arc of the story as recommendations from the panel of judges on how to perfect a story pitch. Sheltered from a thunderous storm by the white festival tent, Arielle Eckstut and guest judge Joe Durepos sit to Sterry’s left as they regard the contestants one-by-one as they present their book pitches behind a podium. “Show us your writing chops,” Sterry directs to another aspiring novelist.

New to Printers Row, Pitchapalooza first began five years ago, but recently returned with a vengeance—there have been about thirty since last October, each balancing pitches ranging between “not very promising” and “truly extraordinary.” Audience members waiting to grab a chance to pitch their book ideas listen intently for their names to be called—not everyone who attends wants to present, and only twenty will. Laughter flutters through the crowd as the next presenter opens, “I hope you all know you’re naked right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

Comfort Station Pop-Up Library

By Elizabeth Kossnar

For any other organization, having a Chicago blizzard wreak havoc on a collection of zines and other periodicals, suffering an occurrence of flesh-eating bacteria and moving from one space to another four times or so may be the end-all, but not for the Chicago Underground Library (underground-library.org). In fact, not only do they use their situations to their advantage, but they find the humor in their misfortune. The dioramas of their previous locations made by local artists celebrate the number of occupancies they’ve had, and their upcoming fundraiser at Beauty Bar will make a mockery of winter with a wintry theme on June 24. While CUL is still looking for a new permanent location after the aforementioned blizzard rendered their last home unlivable, they decided to make their collection mobile with “Structurally Sound,” a Pop-Up Library series that focuses on the specific neighborhood in which the exhibit is located. Although this destiny is not what CUL would have imagined for itself, CUL’s executive director Nell Taylor explains that this project consistently forces them to “think about our collections in new ways.” Read the rest of this entry »

Edwidge Danticat

Reclaiming its full span of traditional streetside real estate this year, tThe Printers Row Lit Fest marks its twenty-seventh outing with more than 200 authors and 150 booksellers.

There’s probably something for every taste. Here’s our likely itinerary:

Saturday, June 4

MSNBC junkies will want to catch frequent guest Jonathan Alter, author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” being chatted up by the Trib’s Rick Kogan. 10am, Trib Nation Stage

Want to get real insight into Haiti? Listen to this year’s Harold Washington Literary Award-winner Edwidge Danticat in a ticketed event. 11:30am, Harold Washington Library Center/Cindy Pritzker Auditorium

Listen to two of our nation’s preeminent African American literary figures chat it up, when Ishmael Reed sits in conversation with Haki Madhubuti in a ticketed event. Noon, Harold Washington Library Center/Multipurpose Room Read the rest of this entry »

Although conceived by Victor David Giron in the early 1990s in Urbana, Curbside Splendor was finally realized in 2009 with the purpose of publishing Giron’s novel, “Sophomoric Philosophy.” Since then, Curbside Splendor has been consistently publishing short stories, poetry and photography online, recently released its first compilation of online and previously unpublished material, “Curbside Splendor Issue 1: Spring 2011”, as well as, been preparing for its newest release, “The Chapbook: Poems by Charles Bane, Jr.” due to come out in July. And then there are the events.

Beginning in February of this year, Curbside Splendor created a pop-up bookstore appearing at the Logan Square Farmers Market at least once a month, selling work from Chicago presses and authors next to stalls selling locally grown produce. The Curbside Splendor Bookstand is a satisfying idea of “locally grown with locally published” standing side-by-side. The Curbside Splendor Bookstall is currently on a hiatus along with the Logan Square Market, but it will return again when the summer season begins on June 5, preferring to stay local rather than finding a new place to pop up. “Logan Square is a very personal place,” Giron says.

In addition, each month Curbside Splendor hosts a “Two With Water” reading event at the Beauty Bar, where Giron is part-owner. The next installment takes place on July 10. See curbsidesplendor.com for details. (Elizabeth Kossnar)