Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, June 2nd:

KRISTIN FITZSIMMONS received her MA from the University of Chicago in 2008. She is currently an Americorps member at the Hull House Association in Uptown where she teaches English as a Second Language and attempts to learn Spanish as a fourth language in addition to French and Dutch. Some of her recent poems are published in the March/April 2009 edition of The Boston Review.

CATHY GILBERT grew up in Central Illinois, and after receiving her MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, she returned to that area to become an Instructor of English at Heartland Community College in Normal, IL. She teaches many levels of composition and is excited to teach some creative writing classes in the fall. When she is not frantically planning, teaching, or grading, Cathy turns to poetry to calm her nerves. Her poems have appeared in the Madison Review, Main Channel Voices, and Pank, and can most recently be found in an online journal called r.kv.r.y. Cathy is very grateful for the opportunity to read her poems tonight, here in the great city of Chicago. She's been looking forward to the promised cupcake for over a month.

PARNESHIA JONES

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, April 7th:

ELISABETH BLAIR is a folk vocalist and songwriter. She will be performing as the main vocalist in a performance art piece called "ALAS" May 1, 2, and 3 at Links Hall. For more info, visit www.elisabethblair.net

GINA DiPONIO's work has appeared in Contrary Magazine, Story Week Reader, Traverse Magazine, and others. She teaches literature and writing to every age of student, from 3rd graders to elderly home residents, around Chicago. Any time now, she'll have an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago.

WILLIAM SHUNN is a full time writer, known mainly for science fiction. His short fiction has been appearing in the major magazines of the field since 1993, and has spilled beyond the borders of the genre to appear in places like Salon.com and Storyteller Magazine. He's a past nominee for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award (twice), and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Six of his stories were collected in a 2007 chapbook called An Alternate History of the 21st Century. His first novel, Cast a Cold Eye (co-authored with Canadian SF writer Derryl Murphy), will appear sometime late this year from PS Publishing. He's hard at work on a science fiction novel for young adults, called Technomancers. For more info visit his website: https://www.shunn.net.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, March 3rd:

Originally from Michigan, JOSEPH GIBSON IRVIN earned his MFA from New School University in New York City. His first novel, A FENCE WE CAN CLIMB, is a midwestern gothic tale of two brothers who murder their invalid father for his money. Currently he is working on his literary blog, bookish.us, and seeking representation for his novel.

KRYSTEE WYLDER writes songs for fun and folly, she likes to tell stories about life and also make up nonsensical tapestries of words. She likes cats, coffee and crocheted hats.....she is moving back to chicago after a few months away and is excited to find a new job as a nanny and settle back into her shoes and bicycle in the great big city.

CONNOR COYNE grew up in the East Village of Flint, Michigan, and has lived in Chicago and New York City. He received his Bachelors from the University of Chicago and his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the New School. He has written plays, poetry, essays, short stories, and novels, and his work has been featured in the Saturnine Detractor and the Dick Pig Review. He is a cofounder of the Gothic Funk Nation and is proud to have helped organize Tuesday Funk.

Tuesday Funk #10

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, February 3rd:

LYNN SUH: Born in Cambridge (MA), and raised in Paris, Chicago, and Seoul (Korea), Lynn has been a bit of a vagabond with few constants in life - his parents, his violin, and his habit of talking to himself. His poetry reflects his personal reflections on human foibles, aspirations, and dignity, and shows his love of literature, music, and nature. His poetry primarily draws inspiration from Czeslaw Milosz and Rainer Rilke. He holds a bachelors degree from U.C. Berkeley, and a masters degree from the University of Chicago. Presently, he is working both as a part-time tutor and freelance musician, and is hoping to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.

JONATHAN WILLIAMS hails from the sleepy state capital of Tallahassee, which he fled to pursue Statistics at the University of Chicago. There he first ran across the Gothic Funk crowd, as well as the U of C Scavenger Hunt. First a participant and later a judge, he still helps out with the Hunt despite having collected two degrees and so losing any further pretense for hanging around campus. His interests include origami, the intelligence community, and forgetting grad school.

HALLIE GORDON is the author of several plays including Imaginary Nostalgia, Trick of the Light and Dry Lightning. She is currently working on a first novel titled Dreaming of Heaven. Hallie is proud to be one of the organizers of Tuesday Funk.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, January 6th:

SPENCER DEW is the author of the story collection Songs of Insurgency (Vagabond Press, 2008). His fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals. He is a regular reviewer for Rain Taxi Review of Books and is completing a PhD at the University of Chicago on the novels of Kathy Acker. His website is www.spencerdew.com.

EIREN CAFFALL was born in New York City, a year and a day after the first Earth Day, raised in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. She spent her childhood creating language for the landscapes she encountered, reading, and establishing imaginary countries in the forest.
She is a freelance writer living and working in Chicago, and has written for travel guides, created book reviews for Punk Planet Magazine, taught creative writing workshops to students from ages 4-18. She has recorded several albums of original music; her latest was Civil Twilight, completed in 2004.
She is currently at work on a book-length collection of essays. She lives on Chicago's north side with her husband Jason and son Dexter, where they are only two blocks from Lake Michigan.

ELIZABETH WETMORE is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a 2006 - 2007 recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several grants from the Illinois Arts Council. A recent story -- "Listening for Grace" -- appeared in the journal Salt Flats Annual and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other stories have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is currently at work on a novel set in West Texas and a collection of short stories set in Phoenix, Arizona.

Due to holidays past and future, there will be no Tuesday Funk this upcoming December 2nd.

Please join us for the next Tuesday Funk on January 6th, 2009. 7 PM @ Flourish Cafe in Edgewater.

Please join us at Flourish on Tuesday, November 11th for a special Love-themed Tuesday Funk.

Dancing Girl Press founder KRISTY BOWEN commissioned fifteen poets to imagine the love letter and sold them boxed together under the title billet-doux. The result was something breathtaking, beautiful and full of surprises. Now Kristy and some of those same writers come to Tuesday Funk to share these letters in front of our microphones.

LISBETH LEVINE, co-author of the The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day will share her thoughts on the phenomenon of the contemporary American Wedding. And poet and essayiest ROBERTA WILSON reflects on the nature of love itself.

LISBETH LEVINE spent 10 years writing and editing at newspapers before embarking on a freelance career. She is a contributing editor at In Style magazine and has written for Chicago, Seventeen, Brides and many major newspapers. She has logged extensive computer time writing about weddings over the years, but nothing tops the wedding opus that is her first book. The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day (Workman Publishing), a collaboration with L.A. wedding planner Mindy Weiss, was published in April, 2008.

ROBERTA WILSON is a recent Chicago transplant, studied culinary and pastry art at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. After completing the curriculum there, she graduated with an associates degree and began to work in the culinary field. Roberta also writes poetry and short stories, and hopes to publish her works.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, October 7th:

BRYAN ALASPA Bryan Alaspa has been writing in one form or another since he first sat down in front of his mother's electric typewriter in the third grade. At that time he typed out his first three-page, punctuation-deprived piece of fiction. It has been downhill ever since.
Despite a brief detour into the world of broadcasting via radio, Bryan has been passionate about writing from that day forward.
Bryan wrote his first full-length novel, The Ballad of the Blue Denim Gang, just after college. Right after that he wrote a mystery novel, The Vanished Child. He took a break, writing mostly articles and business-related materials before returning to fiction with his powerful and disturbing look at small town life called Dust.
Bryan has also recently ventured into non-fiction thanks to Schiffer Publishing. His book Ghosts of St. Louis: the Lemp Mansion and Other Eerie Tales was released in 2007. He has since written the book Chicago Crime Stories: Rich Gone Wrong which will be released in spring of 2009. He has a book about famous Chicago disasters in the works for Schiffer as well.
RIG is his first foray into the genre that made Bryan want to start writing in the first place: horror fiction. While he wrote the book shortly after Dust, it took him time to rewrite and fine-tune the story for publication.
Bryan still lives in Chicago and is working on both fiction and non-fiction works while also writing articles, columns and reviews for various print and online publications. He still hopes to some day write the definitive book on Chicago.

JETT McALLISTER received an MFA in poetry writing from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow and served as the editor of the journal Meridian. He is currently writing a dissertation on sublimity and contemporary poetry at the University of Chicago. His poems have recently appeared in the Columbia Poetry Review, Center, Hunger Mountain, Bitter Oleander, and other journals.

DARYL MURPHY received an MFA from the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop and has published poetry and fiction in journals including The Black Scholar, Passages North, and The MacGuffin. Daryl has been creative writing faculty at various colleges and universities since 1985.

REINHARDT SUAREZ wonders why the king sent all his horses to help put Humpty Dumpty together after his unfortunate fall off the wall. This is principally due to two things: the common horse's animal intellect (which is woefully inadequate for the complex surgical work involved) combined with a distinct lack of oposable thumbs. Reinhardt Suarez, on the other hand, does not lack opposable thumbs. He has used his thumbs--along with his other fingers--to write his recently completed novel, Guessing and Keeping Still, as well as other sundry tales of derring-do. He lives in Chicago, where several other people live, too.

Starting on October 7th, Tuesday Funk will be hosted by the Flourish Bakery Cafe conveniently located at 1138 West Bryn Mawr, just steps from the Bryn Mawr Red Line stop.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, September 9th:

JOTHAM BURRELLO teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College where he directs the publishing lab. His work has appeared in literary journals, many of which you have never heard of. He also runs the multimedia company erpmedia.net.

AMY DAVIS founded the nonprofit WorkShirts Writing Center, where she taught fiction workshops and ran a public reading series for five years, before leaving to focus on her own fiction and freelance writing again. She also served as editor-in-chief of the award-winning literary journal Fish Stories. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared nationally in The Sun and Book magazine, and she has received two artist residencies at Ragdale for a novel-in-progress. Currently, she is completing a nonfiction book, Art Works, with the artist Don Seiden, and is co-founder and the director of The Writers WorkSpace (www.writersworkspace.com), a shared studio and meeting space for writers in Chicago.

DON SEIDEN is a professor emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he founded SAIC's master of arts in art therapy program and taught in the sculpture and art education departments. As a visual artist, he has exhibited work in over thirty-five shows, was charter president of the Illinois Art Therapy Association, and has mentored other artists from around the world. He also has published three books, Artobiography (Fisheye Graphics, 2007), Mind Over Matter (Magnolia Street Press, 2000), and the first edition of the co-authored Direct Metal Sculpture (Crown Publishing, 1966). His latest book of nonfiction is called Art Works: How Making Art Illuminates Your Life. His website is www.donseiden.com.

CONNOR COYNE grew up in the East Village of Flint, Michigan. He received degrees from the University of Chicago and the New School in New York City. He is a cofounder of the Gothic Funk Nation, and his work has been featured in the Dick Pig Review. Connor lives in Uptown, Chicago, and maintains a website at www.hereisnowhy.com.