William Shunn is the author of thirty works of short fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon-nominated novella "Inclination" (available as an audiobook from Audible.com). His stories have appeared in Salon, Asimov's, F&SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, Storyteller, Electric Velocipede, and various Year's Best anthologies. An early draft of his memoir The Accidental Terrorist can be heard as a podcast.

Bill is also a co-producer and co-host of our Tuesday Funk readings, of which his Poems by Bill are a regular feature. In the wake of the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, he is beginning to come to terms with the fact that his best-known piece of writing by far is his essay on "Proper Manuscript Format." He is unwelcome ever to return to Canada, and claims he is not actually a grand motherfucker.

Please see Bill and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

A native Chicagoan, Patricia Skalka grew up reading books from the once-a-week mobile library in her far southeast side neighborhood. Although always a fan of fiction, she spent most of her professional life writing award-winning medical and human interest articles for Reader's Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, and more than a dozen other national publications. She also ghosted non-fiction books for Rodale Books and Random House, and is co-author of Nurses on Our Own (St. Martin's Press, Avon), which was optioned for a TV movie.

Now she's where she's wanted to be all along─writing novels. Death in Door County, the first book in her literary mystery series, is being considered by a leading publisher, and she's hard at work on the second installment. Pat is a member of the Authors Guild and Off Campus Writers Workshop. Check out her reviews of fiction and non-fiction books─both new and old favorites─on her blog, Books in Brief.

Please see Pat and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Tuesday Funk is delighted to be producing this Friday's Chicago Writers Conference special reading event together with Open Books, an organization that truly needs and deserves your support.

Open Books, if you don't know, is a nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond. Their mission is to enrich lives through reading, writing, and the unlimited power of used books.

Their programs include reading buddies for elementary school students; creative writing field trips for 4th through 12th graders; college and career mentoring for high school juniors; literacy workshops for all ages; and much, much more.

Their bookstore, open 7 days a week in River North, offers more than 50,000 donated books for sale to support their programs. Tax-deductible book donations are always welcome, and you can learn many other ways to support and help out Open Books by visiting their website, open-books.org.

Open Books is located at 213 W. Institute Pl., conveniently near the Brown Line stop at Chicago Avenue. Watch this space to learn how you can attend our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition of Tuesday Funk at Open Books, Friday, September 14th, 7:30 p.m., featuring Patricia Skalka, M. Salahuddin Khan, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal. We hope to see you there!

Last week Daryl Gregory dropped by our Tuesday Funk microphone to deliver a quietly powerful story of the persistence of vision made literal, and it went a little like this...

And if you enjoyed that, please join us at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books, featuring M. Salahuddin Khan, Patricia Skalka, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal!

Born in Burewala, Pakistan, in 1952 of refugee parents from India, M. Salahuddin Khan is a management consultant. From 1998 to 2007, he was the Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer, and Senior VP of Global Marketing and Strategy for NAVTEQ Corp. From 2006 to 2008, he was publisher of Islamica Magazine.

In 2008, Khan was co-executive producer of a 12-minute short movie called The Boundary, starring Alexander Siddig (Syriana, Kingdom of Heaven). The movie was about civil liberties at a U.S. border crossing in a post-9/11 world. Khan has made radio and TV appearances, including NBC, CTV, WBZ Boston, Mancow in the Morning, and others. He is also the Thursday host of Radio Islam at WCEV 1450 AM Chicago and has had featured op-ed pieces in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Huffington Post.

In less than a year following initial publication, Khan's debut novel, Sikander, was named the Grand Prize winner of the 2011 Los Angeles Book Festival and the 2011 Paris Book Festival,

winner in the fiction category at the 2011 Beach and 2011 Hollywood Book Festivals, and runner-up in the same category for the 2011 New York Book Festival. Sikander was also the winner in the multi-cultural fiction category at the 2011 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for 2011. Khan was also awarded the CAIR Chicago Book Award for 2012.

Along with being a husband to loving wife Rehana and father to their six children, Khan is a designer, engineer, artist, writer, inventor (with several U.S. patents), and worldwide traveler.

Please see Salahuddin and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Rachel Wilson's YA debut Don't Touch will be published by Harper Children's in Summer 2014. Rachel studied Theater at Northwestern University and earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

As a company member of Barrel of Monkeys Children's Theater, she teaches, adapts children's writing for the stage, and wears lots of silly hats! She also performs regularly in Barrel of Monkeys' long-running show, That's Weird, Grandma! Rachel lives on the beach with a sweet dog named Remy Frankenstein. You can find her on Twitter at @storybookgirl or at http://storybookgirl.blogspot.com.

Please see Rachel and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor, 2010) and Glamour in Glass (Tor, 2012). In 2008 she received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2011, her short story "For Want of a Nail" won the Hugo Award for Short Story. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. She served two terms as Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Her stories appear in Asimov's, Clarkesworld, and several Year's Best anthologies. Mary, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor, recording fiction for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit MaryRobinetteKowal.com.

Please see Mary and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Greetings, Funkers! I know I say it time and time again, but if you missed this week's Science Fiction Edition of Tuesday Funk, you missed a hell of a good show.

First Gregory A. Wilson kicked things off in grand style with a tale that revealed the humanity at the heart of a mechanical man. Dapper Rajan Khanna then took us for some mind-bending and strangely costly travel through the secret doors that lurk in places we'd rather not look. And Adam Rakunas summoned us to the principal's office for a hilariously profane dressing-down that could only be forestalled by internet porn.

After our intermission break for beer at the bar, co-host William Shunn, in his latest Poem By Bill, brought the house down with his rhyming, rapping tale of a "Grand Motherfucker." Rae Carson followed that up with aplomb, bringing us the story of a girl who awakens after five days into a world that has changed in vivid and terrifying ways. And Daryl Gregory brought us a beautiful story in which the persistence of vision is made heartbreakingly literal.

But if you missed out, don't despair. We'll be bringing you plenty of video from the evening over the next few weeks, and we'll be back on Friday, September 14th, with our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition, featuring M. Salahuddin Khan, Patricia Skalka, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal. Be sure to join us!

Hey, Chicago! Tuesday Funk is bringing you an extra helping of the Funk this month. But before I tell you about that, let me tell you a little something about the Chicago Writers Conference, to be held September 14-16 at Tribune Tower, and why you should get your ass to it.

What do you get as an attendee of the inaugural edition of the Chicago Writers Conference? You get three days of talks and sessions about the business side of publishing from professionals of every stripe—editors, agents, and writers alike—including a keynote address from Guggenheim Fellow and MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient Aleksandar Hemon.

What's more, Tuesday Funk and Essay Fiesta are teaming up with the CWC to bring conference attendees two nights of the great "live lit" that makes Chicago's such a vibrant writing scene. Tuesday Funk kicks things off the night of Friday, September 14th, with an evening of fiction readings at Open Books featuring Mary Robinette Kowal, M. Salahuddin Khan, Rachel Wilson, Patricia Skalka, and William Shunn. Essay Fiesta follows on Saturday night with a great program of personal essays.

The catch is, only a handful of seats will be available at these readings to folks not attending the conference. The only way to be guaranteed a seat is if you register now. But hurry! Only a handful of slots are left, and you have less than 24 hours remaining to register! Late registration will close at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, September 7th.

So please consider joining the CWC, and we'll see you September 14th at Open Books!

We at Tuesday Funk love Hopleaf and the wonderful room they let us use every month, so we're happy to spread the word about a great cause they undertake every year.

No, it's not a program to give beer to minors! It's a charitable event to raise money to support Helen C. Peirce Elementary School, and it takes place this coming Sunday, September 9th, from noon to 5:00 p.m. at Hopleaf. Click the image below for more information on how you can participate, or visit KegsForKidsChicago.com.