As you know, the Hopleaf Bar has been home to the Tuesday Funk Reading Series for about a year, now. The Hopleaf folks have been gracious and generous with their space. So we’d like to return the favor and spread the word about a Hopleaf event that is for a good cause (um, for da kids).

It’s a really cool event for a noble cause. C’mon. You wanna be noble, right? Oh, and there’s beer.

Alright, ladies and gents. We’re back. Better than ever. Because of the robots.

Come to Tuesday Funk, and you will know why we cry. Wait. That doesn’t sound too fun. Forget about the cry part. Just come on down (if you want to live) to Hopleaf, listen to some great readers, and drink high class beer.

First of all, I’d like to announce that Tuesday Funk will take a much needed break in August. But it will be back on the first Tuesday of September.

Now then, an explanation of the title of the post:

Traditionally, comics and magazines with the volume number set to zero are meant to be explanations of the origins of the series. All is supposed to be revealed. However, in this case, I use it in the “Pol Potian” (word?) way to mean “making a new start.”

As announced at July’s Tuesday Funk, I, your friendly neighborhood Reinhardt Suarez, will no longer be hosting this exciting and intrepid reading series (every first Tuesday of the month at Hopleaf Bar–check it out!). I cannot express how fun it has been to see this reading grow into what it is, and how fun it has been to help it along in the minuscule ways that I have.

But fear not! Though we were hoping LeBron would actually sign with us, we did have a backup plan. And that involved sending me, two draft picks to be named later, a collection of Stevie Nicks CDs, and three large pepperoni pizzas to an undisclosed reading in far-flung Minneapolis for the rights to Sara Ross, a veteran host from such illustrious places as New York City (city of glamor and fame!) and Washington D.C. (city of knife fights and jowly men in suits making bad decisions with ill-gotten gains!)

Sara, along with Tuesday Funk stalwart, Hallie Palladino, will continue to bring you eclectic nights of fiction, essays, and poetry at the same TF-time and same TF-channel. So please stay tuned.

*Cue sunset, me walking toward it, and finding out that it’s a matte painting.*

RS

It’s once again time for your regular monthly serving of Tuesday Funk! As always, we have a gaggle of great readers, and as always, we are at Hopleaf, home of beer, frites, and the best audience in the Chicagoland area. So end your Fourth of July weekend the right way with us. We’ll bring the bag of chips if you bring the “all that.”

This month’s readers:

Liza Ann Acosta

Kevin Kane

Dan Duffy

Hi all!

Come join us for another explosive Tuesday Funk!

Where: Hopleaf Bar

When: June 1, 2010, 7:30 PM

Readers: Sean Manning, Truly Render, Sara Ross, and Cesar Torres

It is time once again to invite you to a Tuesday Funk Reading. After our one-month hiatus, we are back to bring you awesome readers, awesome beers, and cool company. So if you’re a TF veteran, welcome back! And if you’re new to TF, what the hell are you waiting for?

Hi all. This is Reinhardt here, co-host of the Tuesday Funk Reading Series. Normally, you’d be looking at this and reading the info for our illustrious reading coming up. However, due to a semi-unfortunate event (a beer brewer’s conference coming to Chicago in early April). our lovely venue cannot host us in April. So, alas, we will take a short hiatus until May 4, when we will come back better than ever!

Until then, have at thee.

Love, Reinhardt (also on behalf of Connor Coyne and Hallie Palladino)

Please join us on Tuesday, March 2nd for the third Tuesday Funk Reading of 2010.
Hopleaf Bar at 5148 N. Clark Street
Reading starts 7:30 PM.
Upstairs room opens 7:00 PM.
Come early to get a good seat.
Cash only at the bar upstairs.

Liza Ann Acosta teaches Comparative Literature at North Park University and is an artistic associate of Chicago's only all-Latina theater company, Teatro Luna.

Mary-Terese Cozzola is a writer and filmmaker. Her prose and poetry have been published in Crawdad, After Hours, and Swivel, and her films have screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Chicago Short Comedy Video & Film Festival, and the Midwest Independent Film Festival. She has performed solo pieces at the Stockyards Theatre Women's Performance Art Festival and SpeakEasy/SpeakHard: the Malinowski salon. You can learn more about her work at www.mtcozzola.com. She lives in and loves Chicago.

Ryan Philip Kulefsky lives in Chicago, IL and holds an MFA from Bard College. His chapbook, DEAD TWINS, published by Bathroom Reading Materials (2010), is comprised of contributions to an email listserv during the fall of 2009. He teaches writing and rhetoric and American literature at Columbia College.

Brian Russell earned his MFA from the University of Houston, where he served as poetry editor of Gulf Coast. His poems have appeared or will in Mid-American Review; Epoch; Quarterly West; LIT; and Forklift, Ohio; among others. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the past three years.

Steve Timm is a poet and author of 'n'altra storio, Disparity, and the chapbooks Stragetics and Averrage. He was the performer in A Poem by Steve Timm, a video by Ya-Ling Tsai chosen for the 2004 Wisconsin Film Festival. He teaches English as a second language at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Please join us on Tuesday, January 5th for the first Tuesday Funk of 2010.
Hopleaf Bar at 5148 N. Clark Street
Reading starts 7:30 PM.
Upstairs room opens 7:00 PM.
Come early to get a good seat.
Cash only at the bar upstairs.

J-L DEHER-LESAINT was born and raised in Guadeloupe (French West Indies) and moved to the United States in 1995 where he earned degrees from Harold Washington College, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Virginia. He is an English professor at Harold Washington College.

KRISTIN LUEKE received her MA in Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she completed a chapbook called The Troubadour Detours. Her work has appeared in decomP Magazine.

As actor, educator, and writer ARLENE MALINOWSKI views solo work as an artistic extension of the social justice work she has been doing for the last twenty five years. Her five solo plays including What Does the Sun Sound Like and Aiming for Sainthood have been produced and performed in venues nationwide including St Louis Center of Contemporary Art; 16th Street Theater, Chicago; Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival; HBO Workspace; NoHo Theatre Festival; Ojai Solo Series; National Center on Deafness; West Coast Ensemble; and Blue Sphere Alliance, as well as at numerous colleges throughout the country. Most recently she performed a new piece which was named one of the five best solo shows by Windy City Times. Her solo work has been honored with an LA Garland Award and nominations for the LA Weekly Award and the Los Angeles Theatre Ovation Award. As an actor she has appeared in numerous theater productions including the world premiere of By the Music of the Spheres at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Other favorite roles include Lovers and Other Strangers, Labor Pains, Chapter Two, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Deaf West, the critically acclaimed In A Different Voice and Faith, Hope and Clarity.

Arlene is also a writer and performer with the nationally touring, multicultural show A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens which was honored with the White House Award for the Initiative on Race. Recent TV credits include CBS Movie Sweet Nothing in My Ear, CSI, ER, The Division, The Practice, The Division, Any Day Now, twelve segments of Fit Spa and Resort and The X Files. She teaches solo writing and performing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, and coaches individual artists. Her numerous solo students have been honored with Garland Awards, special recognition at the Edinburgh Fringe, LA Weekly Awards, FEM Finalists, Windy City Chicago best solo show, and numerous critics pick. She is a contributing writer for the Week Behind and Selling Lemonade for Free and is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and Artist in Residence at 16th Street Theater. Her newest play Anonymous Donor about sperm banks, technology and mean girls will have a Chicago reading in 2009.

MEGAN STIELSTRA is the Literary Director for 2nd Story, a personal narrative storytelling series held in wine bars where she regularly tells stories to drunk people. She's performed for the Goodman, the MCA, the Cultural Center, the Neo Futuraium, Story Week, Wordstock, all sorts of bars and conferences, a vineyard, Opium's Literary Death Match (which she won. Because Literature is a dangerous thing!) and regularly on Chicago Public Radio. She teaches creative writing at Columbia College and The U of C.