Daryl Gregory is an award-winning writer of genre-mixing novels, stories, and comics. His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford Award and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His second novel, The Devil's Alphabet, was named one of the best books of the year by Publisher's Weekly and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His 2011 novel Raising Stony Mayhall was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal.

Many of his short stories are collected in Unpossible and Other Stories, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by Publisher's Weekly. His comics work includes the ongoing Planet of the Apes series, and the recently completed Dracula: The Company of Monsters series (co-written with Kurt Busiek). He lives in State College, PA, where he writes programming code in the morning, prose in the afternoons, and comics at night.

Please join Daryl and the rest of our crew of excellent readers in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf on September 4th for the Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular! The fun gets underway at 7:30 pm.

Attention, Chicago Writers Conference attendees! You have until tomorrow night to get us your submissions for our rare special Friday edition of Tuesday Funk.

The reading will take place the evening of Friday, September 14th, at the non-profit Open Books bookstore, in conjunction with the Chicago Writers Conference.

We're currently looking for three conference participants to fill out the roster for this very special evening of fiction and poetry. If you'd like to be considered as a reader, please email us at cwc@tuesdayfunk.org. Tell us a little about yourself and about your work. Include the piece(s) you'd like to read by pasting the text into the body of your email. (We prefer not to download attachments.) For fiction, limit your submission to a total of 2,000 words or less. For poetry, send a sample of four or five poems. Readings will be limited to 10 minutes or less.

We are open to any type or genre of fiction and poetry, so long as it's entertaining to listeners. But since we won't be at our usual adults-only location on September 14th, please keep the contents to a mild R rating. And remember, you must be a registered Chicago Writers Conference attendee to participate. (And yes, we will check. Submissions from those who aren't registered by August 25th will not be read.)

The entries are rolling in! Submissions are due by Saturday, August 25th, end of day. The three readers selected to participate will be contacted by no later than September 1st. Don't miss your chance to participate in this exciting evening of live literature, and good luck!

Adam Rakunas lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter. His work has been published by So New Media and Futurismic. He is currently working on a science fiction novel about sex, violence, and labor relations.

Please join Adam and the rest of our crew of excellent readers in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf on September 4th for the Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular! The fun gets underway at 7:30 pm.

Our friend and former Funker, Stephen Markley, author of Publish This Book, will be reading from his new release The Great Dysmorphia: An Epistemological View of Ingesting Hallucinogenic Mushrooms at the 2012 Republican Presidential Debate at Black Rock on August 23. Come for the fun, the funnies, the drinks, and the music.

Pipes and Drums will be performing a set of rock and roll originals and covers inspired by the reading and drink specials.

Party starts at 8:00 p.m. this Thursday.

Factory towns are dying throughout this great land of ours. At our August Tuesday Funk reading, co-host Sara Ross Witt read us a powerful story about one such factory town, and the cost of keeping it running...

And if you enjoyed that, please join us on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, for our Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular featuring Daryl Gregory, Rae Carson, Rajan Khanna, Gregory A. Wilson, and Adam Rakunas. Don't miss it!

We'd like to remind you that for the next five days we're still accepting submissions for our rare special Friday edition of Tuesday Funk. The reading will take place the evening of Friday, September 14th, at the non-profit Open Books bookstore, in conjunction with the Chicago Writers Conference.

We're currently looking for three conference participants to fill out the roster for this very special evening of fiction and poetry. If you'd like to be considered as a reader, please email us at cwc@tuesdayfunk.org. Tell us a little about yourself and about your work. Include the piece(s) you'd like to read by pasting the text into the body of your email. (We prefer not to download attachments.) For fiction, limit your submission to a total of 2,000 words or less. For poetry, send a sample of four or five poems. Readings will be limited to 10 minutes or less.

We are open to any type or genre of fiction and poetry, so long as it's entertaining to listeners. But since we won't be at our usual adults-only location on September 14th, please keep the contents to a mild R rating. And remember, you must be a registered Chicago Writers Conference attendee to participate. (And yes, we will check. Submissions from those who aren't registered by August 25th will not be read.)

The entries are rolling in! Submissions are due by Saturday, August 25th, end of day. The three readers selected to participate will be contacted by no later than September 1st. Don't miss your chance to participate in this exciting evening of live literature, and good luck!

At our August Tuesday Funk reading, author Jesse Jordan read us a captivating excerpt from his new novel Gospel Hollow, and it went a little like this...

And if you enjoyed that, please join us on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, for our Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular featuring Daryl Gregory, Rae Carson, Rajan Khanna, Gregory A. Wilson, and Adam Rakunas. Don't miss it!

At our August Tuesday Funk reading, co-host William Shunn reminisced about space exploration past and present, and it went a little bit this...

And if you enjoyed that journey through and time, please join us on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, for our Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular featuring Daryl Gregory, Rae Carson, Rajan Khanna, Gregory A. Wilson, and Adam Rakunas. You won't want to miss it!

Tuesday Funk is proud and excited that the 70th World Science Fiction Convention will be coming to Chicago in three short weeks! And It so happens that our 48th big reading will take place Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, the day after Worldcon ends. In honor of Worldcon, we plan to put on an evening of great science fiction readings—a veritable Science Fiction Spectacular—with a group of terrific writers we wouldn't normally be able to assemble here in Chicago.

Our stellar lineup that night will include Crawford Award winner Daryl Gregory, Norton and Morris Award nominee Rae Carson, Rajan Khanna, Adam Rakunas, and Gregory A. Wilson! You'll also get a new Poem By Bill, not to mention your pick of dozens of varieties of cold beer at the bar.

The evening gets underway with your co-hosts Sara Ross Witt and William Shunn on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at the newly expanded and renovated Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early for a seat, and grab a beer from Mark at the cash-only bar. We start seating at 7:00 pm and no earlier. Admission is always free, but you must be 21 or older. And come early or stay late after for some great Belgian-style food downstairs.

Please bring plenty of friends, and become a fan of Tuesday Funk on Facebook so you never miss an invitation to one of our readings. Dare we say they're always out of this world?

Every episode of Tuesday Funk at Hopleaf seems to feature some emergent, unintended theme, and Tuesday night's show was no exception. The major theme seemed to be old men, with subthemes of brown liquor and Martian exploration. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Jesse Jordan kicked things off for us with an intriguing and somewhat painful excerpt from his new novel Gospel Hollow. Chicago Magazine's Scott Smith followed that up with a wonderful meditation on growing old, setting the evening's themes in motion (see video below), after which Holly McDowell brought us a poignant and thrilling chapter from her serial novel King Solomon's Wives.

After a break for beer, co-host William Shunn broke with tradition by reading not a poem but instead a brief essay about Curiosity Rover. Next, co-host Sara Ross Witt delivered a powerful short story about a factory town in decline. And Stacy Bierlein brought the old man theme full circle with a wonderfully steamy story from her new collection A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends.

But if you missed out, don't despair. We'll be bringing you more video from the evening over the next few weeks, and then we'll be back on September 4th with our Chicago Post-Worldcon Science Fiction Spectacular featuring Daryl Gregory, Rae Carson, Rajan Khanna, Gregory A. Wilson, and Adam Rakunas. Be sure to join us!