The month of October. These United States. Our 50th big episode. Put them together and what do you get? Tuesday Funk's United States of Horror.

No, it doesn't make any sense, but neither does life, and that's the whole point of the genre we celebrate in this shiveriest of months. Which is why, on October 2nd at Hopleaf, Tuesday Funk will present an evening of horror designed to scare the living daylights out of you. Our frighteningly good lineup that night will include John Everson, Cynthia (cina) Pelayo, and a special dramatic reading by The Colin & Ishmael Players, not to mention your pick of dozens of varieties of cold beer at the bar.

The evening gets underway with your co-hosts Sara Ross Witt and William Shunn on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at the newly expanded and renovated Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early for a seat, and grab a beer from Mark 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 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. We dare you.

Tuesday Funk, in association with the wildly successful new Chicago Writers Conference, put on a terrific reading event this past Friday night at Open Books in Chicago's River North. If you've come to expect the unexpected from Tuesday Funk, then you probably weren't surprised about being surprised about some of the surprises that were sprung upon that evening.

After some introductory remarks about the great work that Open Books does and about our sponsorship partner the Chicago Writers Association, Patricia Skalka kicked things off for us with a noirish, engrossing scene from her Wisconsin-set mystery novel, Death in Door County. Host William Shunn followed that up with the stream-of-consciousness narrative of an old woman awakening in a new robotic body, "Find the Gray Triangle." And Rachel Wilson brought us a poignant chapter from her forthcoming debut young adult novel, Don't Touch.

Our Poem by Bill, "Telegraph," was composed on a topic provided by CWC backer Tina Woelke—"reading." M. Salahuddin Khan followed that up with a powerful excerpt from his novel Sikander, about a young Afghani mujahid who must live with the reality of his first killing. And Mary Robinette Kowal, after an emotional epistolary story about resurrection from the dead, startled and delighted our audience with a shadow puppet play from the 17th century.

People, this is the sort of thing you miss when you miss Tuesday Funk! But don't despair. We'll be bringing you videos from the evening over the next couple of weeks, and then we'll be back on October 2nd with our United States of Horror Edition featuring John Everson, Cynthia (cina) Pelayo, and The Colin & Ishmael Players. Be sure to join us!

Good morning, Chicago! Tuesday Funk could not be more pleased to be bringing you, in association with the Chicago Writers Conference and Open Books, our first special Friday reading event!

This remarkable evening, featuring attendees of the Chicago Writers Conference, will include Patricia Skalka, William Shunn, Rachel Wilson, M. Salahuddin Khan, and Mary Robinette Kowal, plus a Conference-specific edition of our patented Poem by Bill.

This special event takes place at 7:30 p.m. at Open Books, 213 W. Institute Pl. in Chicago's River North neighborhood (convenient to the Brown Line stop at Chicago Ave.). Doors open at 7:00 p.m. The Samich Box food truck will be available outside Open Books from 6:30 on, and you may bring your own beer and wine to the reading.

Remember, the event itself is FREE, but you MUST have a ticket in order to attend. Click here to register and print your ticket, and we'll see you tonight!

Last week our co-host William Shunn
Had just a little too much fun
Reading a poem that was meant to take the piss
Out of the tropes of science fiction,
In a faux-hiphoppish diction,
And it sounded just a little bit like this:

And if you enjoyed that, please join us at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books, featuring M. Salahuddin Khan, Patricia Skalka, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal!

William Shunn is the author of thirty works of short fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon-nominated novella "Inclination" (available as an audiobook from Audible.com). His stories have appeared in Salon, Asimov's, F&SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, Storyteller, Electric Velocipede, and various Year's Best anthologies. An early draft of his memoir The Accidental Terrorist can be heard as a podcast.

Bill is also a co-producer and co-host of our Tuesday Funk readings, of which his Poems by Bill are a regular feature. In the wake of the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, he is beginning to come to terms with the fact that his best-known piece of writing by far is his essay on "Proper Manuscript Format." He is unwelcome ever to return to Canada, and claims he is not actually a grand motherfucker.

Please see Bill and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

A native Chicagoan, Patricia Skalka grew up reading books from the once-a-week mobile library in her far southeast side neighborhood. Although always a fan of fiction, she spent most of her professional life writing award-winning medical and human interest articles for Reader's Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, and more than a dozen other national publications. She also ghosted non-fiction books for Rodale Books and Random House, and is co-author of Nurses on Our Own (St. Martin's Press, Avon), which was optioned for a TV movie.

Now she's where she's wanted to be all along─writing novels. Death in Door County, the first book in her literary mystery series, is being considered by a leading publisher, and she's hard at work on the second installment. Pat is a member of the Authors Guild and Off Campus Writers Workshop. Check out her reviews of fiction and non-fiction books─both new and old favorites─on her blog, Books in Brief.

Please see Pat and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Tuesday Funk is delighted to be producing this Friday's Chicago Writers Conference special reading event together with Open Books, an organization that truly needs and deserves your support.

Open Books, if you don't know, is a nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond. Their mission is to enrich lives through reading, writing, and the unlimited power of used books.

Their programs include reading buddies for elementary school students; creative writing field trips for 4th through 12th graders; college and career mentoring for high school juniors; literacy workshops for all ages; and much, much more.

Their bookstore, open 7 days a week in River North, offers more than 50,000 donated books for sale to support their programs. Tax-deductible book donations are always welcome, and you can learn many other ways to support and help out Open Books by visiting their website, open-books.org.

Open Books is located at 213 W. Institute Pl., conveniently near the Brown Line stop at Chicago Avenue. Watch this space to learn how you can attend our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition of Tuesday Funk at Open Books, Friday, September 14th, 7:30 p.m., featuring Patricia Skalka, M. Salahuddin Khan, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal. We hope to see you there!

Last week Daryl Gregory dropped by our Tuesday Funk microphone to deliver a quietly powerful story of the persistence of vision made literal, and it went a little like this...

And if you enjoyed that, please join us at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books, featuring M. Salahuddin Khan, Patricia Skalka, Rachel Wilson, William Shunn, and Mary Robinette Kowal!

Born in Burewala, Pakistan, in 1952 of refugee parents from India, M. Salahuddin Khan is a management consultant. From 1998 to 2007, he was the Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer, and Senior VP of Global Marketing and Strategy for NAVTEQ Corp. From 2006 to 2008, he was publisher of Islamica Magazine.

In 2008, Khan was co-executive producer of a 12-minute short movie called The Boundary, starring Alexander Siddig (Syriana, Kingdom of Heaven). The movie was about civil liberties at a U.S. border crossing in a post-9/11 world. Khan has made radio and TV appearances, including NBC, CTV, WBZ Boston, Mancow in the Morning, and others. He is also the Thursday host of Radio Islam at WCEV 1450 AM Chicago and has had featured op-ed pieces in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Huffington Post.

In less than a year following initial publication, Khan's debut novel, Sikander, was named the Grand Prize winner of the 2011 Los Angeles Book Festival and the 2011 Paris Book Festival,

winner in the fiction category at the 2011 Beach and 2011 Hollywood Book Festivals, and runner-up in the same category for the 2011 New York Book Festival. Sikander was also the winner in the multi-cultural fiction category at the 2011 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, and nominated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for 2011. Khan was also awarded the CAIR Chicago Book Award for 2012.

Along with being a husband to loving wife Rehana and father to their six children, Khan is a designer, engineer, artist, writer, inventor (with several U.S. patents), and worldwide traveler.

Please see Salahuddin and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!

Rachel Wilson's YA debut Don't Touch will be published by Harper Children's in Summer 2014. Rachel studied Theater at Northwestern University and earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

As a company member of Barrel of Monkeys Children's Theater, she teaches, adapts children's writing for the stage, and wears lots of silly hats! She also performs regularly in Barrel of Monkeys' long-running show, That's Weird, Grandma! Rachel lives on the beach with a sweet dog named Remy Frankenstein. You can find her on Twitter at @storybookgirl or at http://storybookgirl.blogspot.com.

Please see Rachel and the rest of our accomplished readers at 7:30 pm on Friday, September 14th, for our Chicago Writers Conference Special Edition at Open Books in Chicago!