Lania Knight lives down-state where she teaches creative writing at a small-ish directional school. Her stories and essays have appeared (or are about to!) in New Stories from the Midwest, Midwestern Gothic, Jabberwock Review, and PANK. Her first book, a novella about a gay teenager in Missouri, was published in August 2012. You can find out more about her at www.laniaknight.com.

Hear Lania and the rest of our outstanding readers on Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf.

Mairead Case (@maireadcase) is a writer, teacher, and graduate student with recent work in Best American Comics 2011, The Unified Field, and at Bright Stupid Confetti. Currently she is Youth Services Assistant at the Poetry Foundation Library and edits projects for featherproof books, Yeti Publishing, and the Public Media Institute, among others. She is completing a novel.

Hear Mairead and the rest of our outstanding readers on Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf.

CP Chang, a company member of 2nd Story, is a writer and software consultant. He received his M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago, and was formerly an Associate Producer for Elephant Rock Productions. He is blessed to be married to Jessica Young, a teacher, performer, and writer.

CP will be reading as part of our mini-series featuring writers from the new 2nd Story anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck. Hear him and the rest of our outstanding readers on Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf.

Hey, Funkers! We here at Tuesday Funk have a very special, very naughty Valentine's Day treat for you ... but we're not going to give it up to you as easily as all that. You're going to have to work for it.

It's a video, you see, of a very special, very NSFW reading from last week's edition. But if you want to watch it, you need to head over to our Twitter stream, find the tweet we posted earlier today, and tease out the riddle posted therein.

We'll be waiting, there at the end of the treasure trail. Happy Valentine's Day.

For your Valentine's Day pleasure, we present an original sonnet that co-host William Shunn composed for his wife, Laura Chavoen. From our Not Your Parents' Valentine's Day Edition, here's "14 Februarys":

And if you enjoyed that, please join us at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, March 5th, 2013, upstairs at Hopleaf, for an evening with Mairead Case, Lania Knight, Dana Norris, Zoe Zolbrod, and 2nd Story's CP Chang!

Hey, all you glamorous Funkers! Love rollerdisco? Love science fiction and fantasy? Then you need to support the Kickstarter campaign for the Glitter & Madness anthology!

What's this, you ask? It's a new anthology edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas and John Klima, chock full of speculative stories about the secret history of 20th century nightlife and party culture. Think glam rock! Think rollerdisco! Think glitter! Think madness!

The book will be published by Apex Publications and will feature a standalone novella from New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire set in her InCryptid universe. There will also be stories by Alan DeNiro, Amal El-Mohtar, Daryl Gregory, Damien Walters Grintalis, Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard, Jennifer Pelland, Tim Pratt, Cat Rambo, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Diana Rowland, Sofia Samatar, David J. Schwartz, Rachel Swirsky, and Tuesday Funk co-host William Shunn!

In fact, Bill is writing his story together with his fabulous wife Laura Chavoen, so you can be among those contributing to support her fiction debut! And the anthology itself will debut this August at the San Antonio Worldcon, with an otherworldly party at the world-famous Rollercade! Groovy!

Only two days remain to make the last third of the funding requirement! Be glamorous! Contibute now!

What's more, having reached 50% of the funding goal, the anthology is now open to general submissions! If you want to be part of this spectacular publishing event, check out the submission guidelines now!

There's a scary version of the book trailer too.

Also, there are plenty of perks available to funders, including Tuckerizations from any of a dozen different contributors at the $250 contribution level. What's a Tuckerization, you ask? It means you can get your name included in someone's story. That's right! You could be a character in Bill's story, or Daryl Gregory's, or Cat Rambo's, or Tim Pratt's, or on and on and on!

So what are you waiting for? Change into your best day-glo fashions, strap on those chunky roller skates, and pony up for the party anthology of the year!

And if you want to submit a story of your own for consideration, here are your writing prompts:

Roller derby, nightclubs, glam aliens, (literal) party monsters, drugs, sex, glitter, debauchery, etc.

Do it now! You'll be our Valentine if you do.

For your Valentine's Day pleasure, we're pleased to share Andrew Reilly's reading from our December 4th episode. His true story "Here, Capture Something" appears in the new 2nd Story anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck, but we warn you, you might want to have a hanky handy...

And if you enjoyed that, please join us at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, March 5th, 2013, upstairs at Hopleaf, for an evening with Mairead Case, Lania Knight, Dana Norris, Zoe Zolbrod, and 2nd Story's CP Chang!

Though it's not a Tuesday Funk reading, we'd like to invite you to a special evening of speculative fiction readings on Thursday, February 28th, at Open Books Bookstore in Chicago!

It's the first in the Chicago Writers Conference's new quarterly readings series, and we're delighted that they asked Tuesday Funk co-host William Shunn to put together this program of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by great local authors. You can see the Facebook invitation here, which we hope you'll share with all your Chicagoland friends:

http://www.facebook.com/events/148595008632051/

And here's all the info, straight from the CWC itself. Let's see you there, Funkers!

This month, we're excited to kick off our quarterly events at Open Books Bookstore! Join us on Thursday, February 28 for an evening of short readings hosted by Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated author William Shunn. This evening will feature science fiction, fantasy, and horror readings by local authors. This free event gets underway at 6:30 p.m.

Featuring:
Jody Lynn Nye
Mary Anne Mohanraj
Matt Darst
Holly McDowell
Wesley Chu
Richard Chwedyk
William Shunn

For more information, visit our website.

The Basics
Date: Thursday, February 28, 2013
Time: 6:30 - 9:00 pm
Place: Open Books Bookstore
213 W. Institute Place
Chicago, IL 60610
(1 block north of Chicago & Franklin el stop.)

Mark your calendar. We'll see you there!

Our March lineup at Tuesday Funk is fit to make every other reading series green with envy. The roster will feature Mairead Case, Lania Knight, and Dana Norris, not to mention The Beautiful Anthology's Zoe Zolbrod and 2nd Story's CP Chang. Throw in one of our patented Poems by Bill, not to mention your pick of cold beers from around the world, and you've got all the ingredients for a late-winter warm-up of epic proportions. We'll also be debuting our post-reading Q&A, which you won't want to miss!

The evening gets underway with your co-hosts Sara Ross Witt and William Shunn on Tuesday, February 5th, 2012, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early for a table and grab a beer from Mark at the bar (where credit cards are now accepted!). 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. See you there!

It was a packed house that turned out earlier this week to witness our Not Your Parents' Valentines Day Edition of Tuesday Funk, among our best audiences ever, and they were treated to what we can only describe as the most outrageous program we've ever, er, mounted.

Our celebration of love both pure and profane kicked off with Gina Frangello, who pitted Intelligent Woman against Beautiful Woman in her story "What You See," from The Beautiful Anthology. Mary Pat Bohan raised the stakes with a catalog of all the baggage she brings to romantic relationships, and why there's no room for more. And Patricia Ann McNair rounded out the first half with her affecting true story of parental love and loss, "Return Trip," from the 2nd Story anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious by a Low-Flying Duck.

After a break for beer, and a couple of super-secret announcements we'll be telling you more about in the weeks to come, co-host William Shunn brought us our monthly Poem by Bill, a sonnet for his wife entitled "14 Februarys." Hanna Martine upped the ante for the second half of the program with a spicy excerpt from her novel A Taste of Ice that caused at least one audience member to issue a hoarse "Thank you!" And finally, John Everson shattered all bounds of propriety and stomped the shards into the ground with his enthusiastic reading of his short story "Cheerleader for the Labia."

We're still mulling over exactly how much of the video we shot that evening we can offer here on the site. Keep your eyes open. But in the meantime, if you couldn't be there don't despair. We'll be back Tuesday, March 5, 2013, with a program featuring Mairead Case, CP Chang, Lania Knight, Dana Norris, and Zoe Zolbrod.

Until then, dear Funkers, won't you be our Valentine?