Events
UPCOMING
Joyland Magazine and Dzanc Books present
The Fiction Feed: AWP Edition
Thursday, March 1, 7PM, free
Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North Ave · Chicago, IL 60622 · 773-342-0910
Joyland Magazine and Dzanc Books are two innovative publishers pushing fiction with great writing and new means of print and digital distribution. Join us for an evening with four writers, hailing from Chicago, New York and Vancouver. Hosted by Joyland co-founder Brian Joseph Davis and Dzanc co-publisher Dan Wickett.
READERS
Eugene Cross has published work in Narrative Magazine, American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly and Callaloo, among other journals. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He currently lives in Chicago. Fires of Our Choosing (Dzanc) is his first book.
Kevin Chong is the author of four books, including his acclaimed debut Baroque-a-Nova (Penguin) and the travelogue Neil Young Nation (Douglas & McIntyre). His new novel from Arsenal Pulp is titled Beauty Plus Pity. He lives in Vancouver and is a section editor for Joyland.
Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman (Tin House) and the story collection The Taste of Penny (Dzanc). He co-edited the anthologies Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States and Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia. His nonfiction book Igor in Crisis: A Russian Journal is forthcoming from HarperCollins.
Megan Stielstra is a writer, storyteller and the literary director for 2nd Story, Chicago’s urban storytelling series. She has performed for the Goodman Theatre, the Chicago Poetry Center and National Public Radio. She teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College. Her debut collection of stories, Everyone Remain Calm, is now available from Joyland/ECW Press.
http://www.joylandmagazine.com
RECENT EVENTS
Read Only: A night of digital readings featuring Lynne Tillman, Ben Greenman, Jim Hanas, Chris Eaton, Kio Stark, and Stephen O’Connor. Presented by Cursor, Electric Literature, and Joyland.
Monday, March 21
Bell House, Brooklyn moved from Union Hall!
8-11PM
Free
Cursor, Electric Literature and Joyland are three different kinds of digital projects. Join us for a free evening of readings from e-journals and publications. We’ll also be raffling off a Kobo eReader and book packages.
RECENT EVENTS
NEW YORK
McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St. (b/t Lafayette & Mulberry)
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 7PM
FREE
Celebrating the US release of Emily Schultz’s Trillium short-listed Heaven Is Small and Zoe Whittall’s Holding Still For As Long As Possible, the two authors are teaming up with Joyland New York authors Amanda Stern and Jim Hanas for a night of readings. (I’ll be hosting!)
Readers
AMANDA STERN is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Long Haul published by Soft Skull Press. She’s the founder, curator and host of the well-respected and popular The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series. She blogs about her series and culture at her blog, Lessons in Culture. Lessons in Curating. http://happyendingseries.blogspot.com
EMILY SCHULTZ is the author of the novel Heaven Is Small, which was called “a stunning, often surprising read with moments of such audacity that the reader is likely to gasp out loud” by the Vancouver Sun. Having lived in the Midwest and Virginia, Schultz now resides in Toronto where she co founded the literary website Joyland. http://www.joylandmagazine.com
ZOE WHITTALL is the author of two novels – Holding Still For As Long As Possible, and Bottle Rocket Hearts. The Globe and Mail wrote that she “might just be the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler.” http://zoewhittall.blogspot.com/
JIM HANAS lives in Brooklyn and is the author of the collection Why They Cried, which features stories originally appearing in McSweeney’s, Fence, Significant Objects and others. It’s the first publication from Joyland eBooks. http://hanasiana.com/
Host BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS is the other half of Joyland and the author of Ronald Reagan My Father, which was recently longlisted for the $50,000 Frank O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction.
READINGS FROM JOYLAND SAN FRANCISCO
Dog Eared Books
900 Valencia Street
FRIDAY SEPT 17, 8PM
FREE
FEATURING: PETER ORNER, EMILY SCHULTZ, BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS, TAMAR HALPERN, RUTH GALM, and HELENE WECKER
Celebrating the US release of books from Joyland founders Emily Schultz (the Trillium Award nominated novel Heaven Is Small) and Brian Joseph Davis (the Frank O’Connor Prize longlisted Ronald Reagan, My Father) the two Toronto authors are teaming up with San Franciscans for a night of readings.
READERS
PETER ORNER is the author of the novel The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a collection, Esther Stories, finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award and a New York Times Notable Book. He lives in San Francisco.
EMILY SCHULTZ is the author of the novel Heaven Is Small, which the Vancouver Sun called “a stunning, often surprising read with moments of such audacity that the reader is likely to gasp out loud.” Having lived in the Midwest and Virginia, Schultz now resides in Toronto where she co-founded the literary website Joyland. http://www.joyland.ca
BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS is the author of Portable Altamont, a collection that garnered praise from Spin magazine for its “elegant, wise-a** rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes.” Slate called his novel I, Tania, “The book of your fever dreams” and his collection of short fiction, Ronald Reagan My Father, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize. He is the co-founder of Joyland.
TAMAR HALPERN is a screenwriter and director whose feature films include Shelf Life and Your Name Here. She is the recipient of fellowships from Hedgebrook and DreamAgo, and of the Paramount Screenwriting Fellowship and Jack Oakie Comedy Screenwriting Award. She is at work on a story collection about about being sixteen in the 1980s.
HELENE WECKER received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York. Her work has been heard at the KGB Bar in New York and the Barbershop Reading Series in San Francisco. After a dozen years of moving around between both coasts and the Midwest, she is finally settling down in the East Bay, and is hard at work on her first novel, The Golem and the Djinni.
RUTH GALM received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She lives in San Francisco, where she is working on a novel.
Host KARA LEVY is Joyland’s San Francisco editor. Her work has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Mississippi Review Prize Issue 2009, Zen Monster, and Narrative, where it was a winner of the 30Below Prize for writers under 30. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she was a recent Steinbeck Fellow in Fiction at the Center for Steinbeck Studies in San Jose. She lives in San Francisco.
Chicago
Readings From Joyland 2
The Bookcellar
4736 North Lincoln Avenue
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 30, 7PM
FREE
READINGS FROM: EMILY SCHULTZ, BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS, CHARLES MCLEOD, MEGAN STIELSTRA and others
Celebrating the US release of books from Joyland founders Emily Schultz (the Trillium Award-nominated novel Heaven Is Small) and Brian Joseph Davis (the Frank O’Connor Prize longlisted Ronald Reagan, My Father) the two Toronto authors are teaming up with Chicagoans for a night of readings.
READERS
EMILY SCHULTZ is the author of the novel Heaven Is Small, which the Vancouver Sun called “a stunning, often surprising read with moments of such audacity that the reader is likely to gasp out loud.” Having lived in the Midwest and Virginia, Schultz now resides in Toronto where she co-founded the literary website Joyland. http://www.joyland.ca
BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS is the author of Portable Altamont, a collection that garnered praise from Spin magazine for its “elegant, wise-ass rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes.” Slate called his novel I, Tania, “The book of your fever dreams” and his collection of short fiction, Ronald Reagan My Father, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize. He is the co-founder of Joyland.
MEGAN STIELSTRA is the Literary Director for 2nd Story (www.2ndstory.com), a personal narrative performance series dedicated to bringing people together through story. She’s told stories for The Goodman, The Steppenwolf, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and Chicago Public Radio, among others, and is a Literary Death Match Champ. Her fiction has appeared in Other Voices, Fresh Yarn, Pindeldyboz, Swink, Perigee, Annalemma, Venus, and Punk Planet, and has been performed by Chicago’s Theatre Seven and Bohemian Archeology in NYC. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Columbia College and The University of Chicago. Visit her at http://www.meganstielstra.com.
Joyland’s Midwest editor CHARLES MCLEOD’s fiction has appeared in publications including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. His debut collection, National Treasures, and debut novel, American Weather, will be published simultaneously by Random House UK/Harvill Secker in 2011. He lives in Macomb, Illinois, and teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University.
OLDER EVENTS, ANNOTATED
2010
McNally Jackson Books. New York.
Reading and panel discussion. Some sound problems with the tracks I was using to read with but still went off well. According to Scientific American, Jim Hanas performed the world’s first literary reading off an iPad.
Quimby’s. Chicago.
Reading. I hadn’t been to Quimby’s since I was 20, so I was excited about this one. Late plane. Audience killing hailstorm. Non-existent bed and breakfast. The Quimby’s staff and Dan Sinker made up for it all.
Outpost for Contemporary Arts. Los Angeles.
Reading. LA loves art like no other city. A very fun reading with Joyland Los Angeles authors and my first time in the Highland Park neighborhood.
W2 Gallery. Vancouver.
Reading. The biggest event Joyland has ever put on. Hosted by Kevin Chong. I had to set up the sound system, and I’m terrible with large, drywall rooms, so the sound sucked. Got to sit down for my laptop reading with a hanging mike. Made a Lemmy joke that bombed. Had a great time with the Vancouver writers and met Sean Cranbury from Books On the Radio for the second time. (The first time was at the worst bar in Toronto, perhaps the world, as it is a combination family restaurant with open stage folk programming.)
The Scream Festival. Toronto.
Reading. Noted for me leaving the stage when playing recordings of story performances. I did bring a lawn chair, the unfolding and folding up of which created, I think, a complete action for the stage. I wouldn’t have done this except for the fact that it was an amphitheatre with a thousand people and my usual bit with the iPod would have looked odd. The closest I’ve come to my dream of covering all of Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii.
2009
Green Room. Montreal.
Reading for the first Joyland Tour. Green room is still exactly the same. Best sound I’ve ever had for just a reading. Monitors!
KGB Bar. New York.
Reading for the first Joyland tour. Like the Canadian I am, I made us show up too early. Great turnout. Will never forget bartender tapping her watch with all the subtly of a Kabuki actor when the panel discussion with Richard Nash was going on 2 minutes past 9pm.
2008
Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr School of Art. Vancouver.
Performance of Original Soundtrack. To save money for New York I showed up in Vancouver for the week with $40 and fingers crossed for a direct deposit from Torstar. Ate only bagels for three days, but the performance and installation were great.
Issue Project Room. Brooklyn.
Performance of Original Soundtrack. Ran out of money for TV sets but scouring Queens thrift stores for a couple weeks is, for some reason, one of my favorite recent memories. Even with only 14 sets, still came off. Maybe the best performance of the work?
2007
Betalevel. Los Angeles.
Sound performance. My single best live performance ever, even though two of the CD players for It’s Gonna Rain Blood (my adaptation of pieces by Slayer and Steve Reich), weren’t working. Met Mathew Timmons who I still work with today at Joyland.
The Lab. San Francisco.
Sound performance. I sucked. It was my fault.
2006
Pete’s Candy Store. Brooklyn.
Reading. Still one of my favorites because I was paid in Panini sandwiches after Emily and I drove for 12 hours.
2005
Green Room. Montreal.
Reading. I had the audience read from Portable Altamont as a choir. I’ve lost the recording of this.
Butcher Shop Gallery. Vancouver.
Reading. I have absolutely no memory of this night. All I know is that it ended in the karaoke room at a hustler bar called the Dufferin Hotel.
