What's that boiling across the horizon with all the crackling power of late-summer thunderstorm? It's only Tuesday Funk, with a September lineup that will ionize your intellect and electrocute your emotions. For our next outing at Hopleaf, you can look forward to bottled literary lightning from the likes of Edison Blake, Carissa DiGiovanni, AD Jameson, Noreen Natale, and Naomi Buck Palagi, plus another patented Poem By Bill. Oh, and don't forget the dozens of varieties of good, cold beer!

Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, September 6, 2011, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early, stake out a table in the upper room, and grab a beer from John 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 afterward 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 our readings, which later this fall will feature the likes of CP Chang, Hanna Martine, Patricia Ann McNair, Erin Shea Smith, Matthew Darst, Liz Baudler, and yours truly, among many others. You won't want to miss a single reading!

In our humble opinion, Tuesday Funk just keeps getting better and better. What can we submit as evidence, you ask? May it please the court, we present our August 2nd reading at Hopleaf, which, in succession, drew a standing-room crowd and blew its socks off. Honest, we had to gather up all the socks after the audience had departed. The occasion was, in part, a makeup session for some of the readers from our legendary February reading who were prevented from attending by the blizzard, with a couple of jokers tossed into the deck to keep everyone on their toes.

Blizzard refugee Karen Skalitzky kicked things off with "Out," a funny and heartfelt excerpt from her memoir-in-progress. Sondra Morin favored us with a sheaf of her superb poetry. And snowstorm reschedulee Julie Rosenthal enthralled with excerpts from two of her short stories.

After a break to let our audience visit John at the bar, co-host William Shunn read his poem "Immortality." Tegan Jones scored with an excerpt from her novel-in-progress The Year of the Rabbit. February returnee Eden M. Robins delighted us with the prologue from her novel The Grand Adventure of Aught-Nine. And the prodigal yet prodigious Jerry Schwartz hit big with a reading and a song from his novel Pixels of Young Mueller.

(You can check out Jerry's song, "The King of I Don't Care," in the video below, or watch his full performance here. Or if you'd prefer to watch the entire evening's program straight through, you can do that here.)

In short, it was far more than just a makeup session—more like a makeout session with the minds of our Tuesday Funk audience. And if you want to get that same treatment, please join us September 6th for an evening with Edison Blake, Carissa DiGiovanni, AD Jameson, Noreen Natale, and Naomi Buck Palagi. We promise you won't regret it the morning after.

It's hot as an iron foundry out there, so what better way to replenish your cool than joining us tonight for Tuesday Funk, the monthly Chicago reading series where good writing and good beer mix. This evening, in honor of our 6 x 6 = 36th epic episode, we're bringing you six great readers for no more than the price of a single ice-cold beer.

Our scorching lineup on this hottest night of the year includes several readers we're bringing back from our fabled February blizzard edition, so get ready to greet the hardy Karen Skalitzky, Jerry Schwartz, Julie Rosenthal, and Eden M. Robins, not to mention the intrepid Sondra Morin and Tegan Jones. We'll also throw in one of our patented Poems By Bill for no extra charge.

So grab a beer from the bar, "like" us today on Facebook, and we'll all cool down at Hopleaf tonight!

Hopleaf is at 5148 N. Clark St. in Chicago. The reading begins at 7:30 pm in the upstairs lounge. The lounge opens at 7:00 pm. Arrive early for a seat!

As always, the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf is cash-only and 21 and over. Remember also that no food can be brought in from the restaurant.

Jerry Schwartz is the author of Pixels of Young Mueller, a coming-of-age tale published in 2010 by All Things That Matter Press. The book is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle Edition, and you can visit Jerry's website at www.itsjerryschwartz.com.

Jerry also writes, plays, sings, and produces the music of The Jerrys, a fictional band that appears in his novel. The Jerrys' new album, Let's Groove, is available on iTunes, and you can download their new single, "Bigger Than Oprah," on their website at www.itsthejerrys.com.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Jerry and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

Julie Rosenthal is a freelance writer in Chicago. She draws ideas for her stories from the encyclopedia articles she writes for Salem Press . Her fiction has been recognized by ChiZine and has appeared in Columbia College Chicago's 2011 Story Week Reader. More stories are forthcoming this year in A cappella Zoo , Kaleidotrope and an anthology from India-based Zubaan Books .

Julie adds: Thanks very much to Bill and Sara -- and to all of the loyal supporters of Tuesday Funk.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Julie and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

Sondra Morin is a small town New Englander at heart and a longtime proponent of DIY publishing and collaboration. Last year she self-released a poetry chapbook, Inviting the Expanse, under the newly conceptualized Radical Snail Press.

Her poems and short stories have appeared, or are forthcoming in: Curbside Splendor, The Logan Square Literary Review, Two With Water, vis a tergo and Word on Wednesday: Anthology 7. Currently, Sondra can be found working on a collection of prose vignettes concerning cemeteries and posting to her blog: Snails Are Good For The Environment, Too.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Sondra and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

Tegan Jones has been writing professionally for the last 5 years. Trained as a journalist, she has published articles about business trends, environmental issues, travel destinations and many other topics too boring to list here. She currently works as a Content Director at Imagination Publishing, where she dreams of hanging up her business suit and becoming a fiction writer full time. In pursuit of that dream, she's in progress with her first novel, which she hopes to unveil at this time next year.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Tegan and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

Karen Skalitzky is the author of A Recipe for Hope: Stories of Transformation by People
Struggling with Homelessness (ACTA Publications, 2006). The book was inspired by the men
and women she met volunteering at Inspiration Café. An educator by trade, she works as a
reading specialist. She coaches teachers and principals in both underserved and high achieving public schools.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Karen and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

In the grand tradition of underemployed artists, Eden M. Robins has been: a singing waitress, a dildo salesman, a dental assistant, an abortion clinic receptionist, a blowjob instructor, a travel writer, a pelvic model, and a Swahili teacher. She wrote a novel that is currently in the "death rattle" stage of edits and is co-founder and co-editor of the semiprozine Brain Harvest.

Eden has published some things in some places, but not enough things or enough places for you to have noticed... however, you may remember her from the blizzard edition of Tuesday Funk, which none of you showed up to.

Join Tuesday Funk on August 2nd, 7:30 p.m., to hear Eden and all of our talented readers at Hopleaf's upstairs bar!

And we'll bring our July videofest to a stirring close with this short story from acclaimed writer Brenda Cooper, who joined us at our mike in June...

Be sure to join us on Tuesday, August 2, 7:30 pm upstairs at Hopleaf, for six more great readers, including Tegan Jones, Sondra Morin, Eden M. Robins, Julie Rosenthal, Jerry Schwartz and Karen Skalitzky!