Spend your Election Day evening with Tuesday Funk and our lineup of likely candidates for literary stardom—LORI ANN STEPHENS, LAURYN ALLISON LEWIS, KRISTIN LUEKE, DAVE SNYDER, and SONDRA MORIN. Vote early and often with your feet, your beer money, and your clapping hands! You'll be glad you did, and this vote won't result in gridlock.

Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 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 stay afterward for some great Belgian-style food downstairs.

Please bring your friends and show your support for Tuesday Funk. Help us deliver a record turnout so we can keep staging these readings at Hopleaf, the finest food-and-drink establishment on the north side.

Please also become a fan of Tuesday Funk on Facebook, so you never miss an invitation to our readings. And watch this space over the next dozen days for spotlight posts about our readers.

We at Tuesday Funk love The Paper Machete, a weekly "live magazine" where the readers comment on current events. It's always lively and unpredictable, and this week's lineup includes Tuesday Funk friend Scott Smith, Director of Digital Strategy for Chicago Magazine. (The full lineup is here.)

The Paper Machete takes place at 3:00 pm this afternoon at Ricochet's, 4644 N. Lincoln Ave. in Lincoln Square. Get on over there and check it out.

We're hungry for Tamale Hut Cafe Presents: open mic and arts series, that is! On Saturday, October 23, 7-9 p.m., THC Presents: Mercedes, a musical performance. The open mic performances will start the night, which is a great opportunity to read your new writing and hear many other talented readers.

Tamale Hut Cafe
8300 W. Cermak Road
North Riverside, IL

Thanks to everyone who came out to last night's fantastic Tuesday Funk reading at Hopleaf. If you weren't there, you missed plenty of good stuff. Jackie Adamski, in only his second public reading, knocked us out with a profane meditation on faith, uncertainty, and golf. Connor Coyne treated us to a dizzying and inventive excerpt from his new novel Hungry Rats (which you can buy now!, with all proceeds through December 31st going to support the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan).

And William Shunn read us "The Visitors at Wriggly [sic] Field," a raucous tale of baseball, aliens, mad scientists, and beer, complete with visual aids. The story was written in support of Chicago's bid to host the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention. You won't get the full effect without the placards, but if you missed out on the reading you can read Bill's (necessary) introduction to the story here, and read the story itself here.

So that's what you missed last night. The good news is that we'll be back at Hopleaf on Tuesday, November 2 with an all-new slate of readers, including Lori Ann Stephens and Lauryn Lewis. We'll have more announcements about the November lineup soon, but mark your calendars now. You won't want to be left out next month!

Please remember to come out to Hopleaf tonight—Tuesday, October 5th—for our 27th entry in the theoretically infinite Tuesday Funk reading series. We're bringing you brawny fall fiction from the likes of Connor Coyne, Jackie Adamski, and William Shunn. That's three great readers for the price of a beer. Or maybe two. Dare we suggest three?

3³ = 27. Tonight was meant to be. Don't miss it.

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

Tuesday Funk's newest co-producer and friend, William Shunn, is one of our October featured readers!

Since his first sale in 1993, William Shunn's short fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared everywhere from Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine to Salon to On Magazine (formerly Time Digital). His stories have been shortlisted for science fiction's two highest honors, the Hugo and the Nebula Award. His novella Cast a Cold Eye, co-written with Aurora Award-nominee Derryl Murphy, is available in hardcover from PS Publishing, and his memoir The Accidental Terrorist, which he's read from multiple times at Tuesday Funk, can be heard as a podcast at www.shunn.net or through the iTunes store. He first started blogging in 1996, though they didn't call it that then, and unless a legal miracle takes place he's banned for life from Canada.

Join Tuesday Funk October 5th at 7:30 p.m. to see William and all of our readers!

We're pleased as punch to tell you about another one of our talented readers: Jackie Adamski. We first saw Jackie perform at Reading Under the Influence, and felt his style would match our ecclectic series.

Jackie Adamski has a degree in Religious Studies, so money hasn't been in issue in several years. He enjoys the finer things in life, like wine, piano recitals, and bowling. He works mostly with the short story and script format, but occasionally ventures into long heedless (drunken) diatribes to the editor, and is left wondering why said editor subsequently rejects his submissions. Also, he has never cried outside a movie theatre.

Join Tuesday Funk on October 5th at 7:30 p.m. to see Jackie and all of our readers!

Tuesday Funk is excited that Connor Coyne, founder of The Gothic Funk Nation and Tuesday Funk, is returning to our series! None more excited than me. Over four years ago, Reinhardt Suarez and I introduced Connor at our New York reading Fiction Flask (now Guerrilla Lit).

There's something about a circle here...I can't put my finger on it...circle, circle, circle...

What matters is this: Connor = Excitement! Did I mention that he also published his first novel last month? EXCITEMENT!

Connor grew up in the East Village of Flint, Michigan, and has lived in Chicago and New York City. He earned his BA from the University of Chicago and his MFA from the New School. He has written plays, poetry, short stories, and novels, and his work has been published in Santa Clara Review, Moria Poetry Zine, Dick Pig Review, The Saturnine Detractor, and the Flint Broadside.

He has a website at connorcoyne.com and a blog devoted to the apotheosis of the Gothic. This year he published his first novel, Hungry Rats, but he is even more excited by the birth of his daughter, Mary Adelina.

Join Tuesday Funk October 5th at 7:30 p.m. to see Connor and all of our great readers.

October is our fall fiction reading, and our lineup of manly writers—CONNOR COYNE, JACKIE ADAMSKI, and WILLIAM SHUNN—will bring you brawny, beer-soaked stories to fit the season.

Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, October 5, 2010, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early, grab one of the 600 amazing international beers at the bar, and come on up. We start seating at 7:00 pm. Stay afterward for some great Belgian-style food from Hopleaf!

Please bring your friends and show your support for Tuesday Funk. Help us deliver a record turnout so we can keep staging these readings at Hopleaf, the finest food-and-drink establishment on the north side.

Please also become a fan of Tuesday Funk on Facebook, so you never miss an invitation to our readings. And watch this space over the next couple of weeks for spotlight posts about our readers.

Hi, everyone. My name is William Shunn, and I'm one of the new co-producers of Tuesday Funk. If you're reading this, you've probably already noticed our spiffy new web site. I'd like to tell you about some of the other changes afoot.

Tuesday Funk has been one of the most exciting and unpredictable reading series in Chicago since its founding in early 2008. We've featured wild-eyed poets, lark-tongued troubadours, and more excellent fiction, verse, and essays read live than you could shake a blue pencil at. I'm fortunate enough to have been asked to read for the series four times in the past couple of years myself, and I'm proud to have been considered an adjunct member of the Tuesday Funk family.

Connor Coyne, Reinhardt Suarez and Hallie Palladino of the Gothic Funk Nation have run Tuesday Funk with scary efficiency since 2008. I'm very pleased and more than a little humbled to now be co-producing together with Sara Ross (whose entry into the family was announced in July). Sara and I hope to keep the same great mix of genres and disciplines that has made the series so much fun in the past, while throwing in some curve balls to keep things fresh and interesting. We have some big shoes to fill.

While I never want the series to get away from its roots as a showcase for Chicago writers, I'd love to bring more out-of-towners into the mix too. So if you're a writer (or something similar) and plan to be in Chicago the first week of any given month, please drop us a line and we'll see if we have room for you. We'd love to have you. (Email us at tuesdayfunkchicago@gmail.com.)

Oh, another thing. Chicagoans, please mark your calendars for our next reading on Tuesday, October 5, 7:30 pm, at Hopleaf. We'll have Jackie Adamski and Gothic Funk/Tuesday Funk founder Connor Coyne with us that night, and I'll be batting cleanup with my fifth appearance as a Tuesday Funk reader. But most importantly we need to keep our attendance high so we can continue using Hopleaf's upstairs bar month after month. More reminders will follow, but we hope to see you there.

We also have a new Facebook page. Please drop by and "like" Tuesday Funk. And watch for Sara and me to tell you more about ourselves and our upcoming readers over the next several days.

Finally, thanks to Hallie and Reinhardt and especially Connor for all their hard, often thankless work, for their continued input and advice, and for entrusting us with their baby. For all that things may be changing, and for all that we'll make mistakes along the way, we hope to keep the high quality of the Tuesday Funk the same. Thanks, Gothic Funk Nation, for letting us be citizens.