Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, January 6th:

SPENCER DEW is the author of the story collection Songs of Insurgency (Vagabond Press, 2008). His fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals. He is a regular reviewer for Rain Taxi Review of Books and is completing a PhD at the University of Chicago on the novels of Kathy Acker. His website is www.spencerdew.com.

EIREN CAFFALL was born in New York City, a year and a day after the first Earth Day, raised in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. She spent her childhood creating language for the landscapes she encountered, reading, and establishing imaginary countries in the forest.
She is a freelance writer living and working in Chicago, and has written for travel guides, created book reviews for Punk Planet Magazine, taught creative writing workshops to students from ages 4-18. She has recorded several albums of original music; her latest was Civil Twilight, completed in 2004.
She is currently at work on a book-length collection of essays. She lives on Chicago's north side with her husband Jason and son Dexter, where they are only two blocks from Lake Michigan.

ELIZABETH WETMORE is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a 2006 - 2007 recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several grants from the Illinois Arts Council. A recent story -- "Listening for Grace" -- appeared in the journal Salt Flats Annual and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other stories have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is currently at work on a novel set in West Texas and a collection of short stories set in Phoenix, Arizona.

Due to holidays past and future, there will be no Tuesday Funk this upcoming December 2nd.

Please join us for the next Tuesday Funk on January 6th, 2009. 7 PM @ Flourish Cafe in Edgewater.

Please join us at Flourish on Tuesday, November 11th for a special Love-themed Tuesday Funk.

Dancing Girl Press founder KRISTY BOWEN commissioned fifteen poets to imagine the love letter and sold them boxed together under the title billet-doux. The result was something breathtaking, beautiful and full of surprises. Now Kristy and some of those same writers come to Tuesday Funk to share these letters in front of our microphones.

LISBETH LEVINE, co-author of the The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day will share her thoughts on the phenomenon of the contemporary American Wedding. And poet and essayiest ROBERTA WILSON reflects on the nature of love itself.

LISBETH LEVINE spent 10 years writing and editing at newspapers before embarking on a freelance career. She is a contributing editor at In Style magazine and has written for Chicago, Seventeen, Brides and many major newspapers. She has logged extensive computer time writing about weddings over the years, but nothing tops the wedding opus that is her first book. The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day (Workman Publishing), a collaboration with L.A. wedding planner Mindy Weiss, was published in April, 2008.

ROBERTA WILSON is a recent Chicago transplant, studied culinary and pastry art at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. After completing the curriculum there, she graduated with an associates degree and began to work in the culinary field. Roberta also writes poetry and short stories, and hopes to publish her works.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, October 7th:

BRYAN ALASPA Bryan Alaspa has been writing in one form or another since he first sat down in front of his mother's electric typewriter in the third grade. At that time he typed out his first three-page, punctuation-deprived piece of fiction. It has been downhill ever since.
Despite a brief detour into the world of broadcasting via radio, Bryan has been passionate about writing from that day forward.
Bryan wrote his first full-length novel, The Ballad of the Blue Denim Gang, just after college. Right after that he wrote a mystery novel, The Vanished Child. He took a break, writing mostly articles and business-related materials before returning to fiction with his powerful and disturbing look at small town life called Dust.
Bryan has also recently ventured into non-fiction thanks to Schiffer Publishing. His book Ghosts of St. Louis: the Lemp Mansion and Other Eerie Tales was released in 2007. He has since written the book Chicago Crime Stories: Rich Gone Wrong which will be released in spring of 2009. He has a book about famous Chicago disasters in the works for Schiffer as well.
RIG is his first foray into the genre that made Bryan want to start writing in the first place: horror fiction. While he wrote the book shortly after Dust, it took him time to rewrite and fine-tune the story for publication.
Bryan still lives in Chicago and is working on both fiction and non-fiction works while also writing articles, columns and reviews for various print and online publications. He still hopes to some day write the definitive book on Chicago.

JETT McALLISTER received an MFA in poetry writing from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow and served as the editor of the journal Meridian. He is currently writing a dissertation on sublimity and contemporary poetry at the University of Chicago. His poems have recently appeared in the Columbia Poetry Review, Center, Hunger Mountain, Bitter Oleander, and other journals.

DARYL MURPHY received an MFA from the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop and has published poetry and fiction in journals including The Black Scholar, Passages North, and The MacGuffin. Daryl has been creative writing faculty at various colleges and universities since 1985.

REINHARDT SUAREZ wonders why the king sent all his horses to help put Humpty Dumpty together after his unfortunate fall off the wall. This is principally due to two things: the common horse's animal intellect (which is woefully inadequate for the complex surgical work involved) combined with a distinct lack of oposable thumbs. Reinhardt Suarez, on the other hand, does not lack opposable thumbs. He has used his thumbs--along with his other fingers--to write his recently completed novel, Guessing and Keeping Still, as well as other sundry tales of derring-do. He lives in Chicago, where several other people live, too.

Starting on October 7th, Tuesday Funk will be hosted by the Flourish Bakery Cafe conveniently located at 1138 West Bryn Mawr, just steps from the Bryn Mawr Red Line stop.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, September 9th:

JOTHAM BURRELLO teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College where he directs the publishing lab. His work has appeared in literary journals, many of which you have never heard of. He also runs the multimedia company erpmedia.net.

AMY DAVIS founded the nonprofit WorkShirts Writing Center, where she taught fiction workshops and ran a public reading series for five years, before leaving to focus on her own fiction and freelance writing again. She also served as editor-in-chief of the award-winning literary journal Fish Stories. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared nationally in The Sun and Book magazine, and she has received two artist residencies at Ragdale for a novel-in-progress. Currently, she is completing a nonfiction book, Art Works, with the artist Don Seiden, and is co-founder and the director of The Writers WorkSpace (www.writersworkspace.com), a shared studio and meeting space for writers in Chicago.

DON SEIDEN is a professor emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he founded SAIC's master of arts in art therapy program and taught in the sculpture and art education departments. As a visual artist, he has exhibited work in over thirty-five shows, was charter president of the Illinois Art Therapy Association, and has mentored other artists from around the world. He also has published three books, Artobiography (Fisheye Graphics, 2007), Mind Over Matter (Magnolia Street Press, 2000), and the first edition of the co-authored Direct Metal Sculpture (Crown Publishing, 1966). His latest book of nonfiction is called Art Works: How Making Art Illuminates Your Life. His website is www.donseiden.com.

CONNOR COYNE grew up in the East Village of Flint, Michigan. He received degrees from the University of Chicago and the New School in New York City. He is a cofounder of the Gothic Funk Nation, and his work has been featured in the Dick Pig Review. Connor lives in Uptown, Chicago, and maintains a website at www.hereisnowhy.com.

Please join us for the next reading on Tuesday, August 5th:

Poet and artist KRISTY BOWEN the fever almanac (Ghost Road Press, 2006) as well as several chapbook projects, including feign(NMP, 2007) and at the hotel andromeda, a collaborative book arts project inspired by Joseph Cornell. Her second collection, in the bird museum is forthcoming from Dusie Books this summer. Another, girl show, will be published by Ghost Road Press in 2009. She edits the online litzine wicked alice and runs dancing girl press & studio, which publishes work by women poets, hosts readings, retreats and workshops, and features a variety of paper and ephemera related arts and crafts. Visit: kristybowen.net.

ROY GUZMAN was raised from the depths of Honduras and relocated to the saunas of Miami, Florida. Holding degrees from the University of Chicago and Miami Dade College, Roy is an avid comic book and music collector, sometimes skipping two meals to save for another CD from those late-80s bands (O, why did they have to break up?). He fancies asking for help -- especially when he does not need it -- and his childhood hero is Cornelius Rooster.

CARL MARCUM received his MFA from the University of Arizona. He has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. His first collection of poems, "Cue Lazarus," was published in 2001. A new collection, "Constellation," is forthcoming. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at DePaul University in Chicago where he teaches creative writing and literature.

LUKE ANDERSON was one of the founding members of the Writers Workspace in Andersonville/Edgewater. He has been a rodman, a mailman, a high school teacher, a translator, a content development project manager, a barista, and an editor. He is currently a husband and father. Someday, he would like to add 'published fiction writer' to the list.

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. His most recent publications include feature-length interviews with Edmund White and Edward P. Jones. He is an English professor at Harold Washington College.

HALLIE GORDON divides her time between Chicago and London where she is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Brunel University. She is the author of several plays including Imaginary Nostalgia, Trick of the Light and Dry Lightning. She is currently working on a first novel titled Dreaming of Heaven. Hallie is proud to be one of the organizers of Tuesday Funk.

JENNY GAVACS is an ex-journalist, ex-New Yorker and ex-expat. She has a B.S. in journalism, an M.A. in creative writing and works in book publishing. Her work has appeared in House & Garden magazine and Otium, the online literary magazine she helped found. For two years she lived, ate and loved in France, but she is very happy to be back in Chicago.

ELIZABETH REEDER lived in Glasgow, Scotland for twelve years and now lives in Chicago researching and writing her next novel and completing her PhD in Creative Writing. Her fiction appears in respected journals and anthologies in the UK and the US (Women's Press, Polygon, Hanging Loose, Chapman, PN Review). She's had an original drama, stories and an abridgement broadcast on BBC Radio 4. An excerpt of her novel, The Fremont Inheritance, has been published by Long Lunch Press and is one in a series of slim volumes which pair well known authors (Irvine Welsh, Annie Proulx, James Meek, Edwin Morgan) with newbies, such as herself.

REINHARDT SUAREZ is back in Chicago after forays into Ozark Country and the concrete wilds of New York City . He is a graduate of Loyola-Chicago's Creative Writing program and has an MFA from The New School in New York . He is currently at work on a young adult novel, Guessing and Keeping Still, and perhaps, one day, he may even finish it. He is also pleased to be one of the illustrious hosts of Tuesday Funk, though he insists that he is the least illustrious of the three.

RICHARD BENJAMIN received his MFA in fiction from Washington University. His stories have been published in Natural Bridge, The Ginkgo Tree Review, and Puerto Del Sol. He is a winner of the AWP Intro Award for Fiction.

SETH CHAMBERS stories have been published in Aberrations and Alien Skin magazines and are also posted online at Storyhouse. His novel in progress, Twilight is the story of Chari, a woman of magic, reluctantly coming to terms with her extraordinary gift.

KATIE HURLEY studied creative writing at Loyola University and is completing her Masters in Fiction at Northwestern University. Her work has appeared in the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation's Creative Writing anthology, Cadence and Diminuendo. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

MAGGIE KAST received an M.F.A. in fiction from Vermont College and has published stories in The Sun, Nimrod, Kaleidoscope, Rosebud, Paper Street, and Carve. Her essays have appeared in Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, Writer's Chronicle and others. She is currently at work on a book-length memoir, excerpts from which have appeared in America, Image and ACM (Another Chicago Magazine). The latter received a Pushcart nomination and an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award.

JACOB SAENZ is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. His work has appeared in Rhino, Inkstains, and Poetry Magazine.