Gothic Funk

NEW LOCATION! This month’s Tuesday Funk will take place at The Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago.

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

RAYMOND L. BIANCHI is a native of Chicago and the child of Italian Immigrants. He lived and worked for most of the 1990’s in Bolivia and Brazil, first as a volunteer and then in publishing. He is the author of two books of poetry: Circular Descent (2003) from Blaze Vox Books and Immediate Empire (2008) from i.e. Press. He was the guest translation editor for Aufgabe 6 which included a section of 18 Brazilian poets that he translated. His translations of Brazilian poet Sergio Medieros will appear in the fall 2009 edition of Mandorla Magazine from the University of Texas press. He also serves as Publisher and co-founder of Cracked Slab Books of Chicago. In that capacity he served as co-editor for The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century in 2008. He blogs at www.irasciblepoet.blogspot.com.

Following a lifetime career in dance, MAGGIE KAST received an MFA in fiction from Vermont College. She has published stories in The Sun, Nimrod, Kaleidoscope, Rosebud, Paper Street, and Carve. Her essays and memoir excerpts have appeared in Americ2a, Image, Writer’s Chronicle, ACM/Another Chicago Magazine, and others. Her book, The Crack between the Worlds: a dancer’s memoir of loss, faith and family, has just been published by Wipf and Stock and is available at bookstores and www.wipfandstock.com. Read excerpts at www.maggiekast.com.

ARLENE MALINOWSKI – As actor, educator, and writer Arlene 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.

LAURA TIEBERT is a travel writer and author of four guidebooks to Chicago, including Frommer’s Chicago with Kids, Frommer’s Chicago Day by Day, Chicago for Dummies, and the forthcoming Frommer’s Chicago Free and Dirt Cheap. She has ghostwritten eight For Dummies books, ranging from Blues for Dummies with Chicago blues legend Lonnie Brooks, to Beauty Secrets for Dummies with supermodel Stephanie Seymour. Studying with Chicago performance artist Brigid Murphy, she completed her first novel, Sapphire Dunes, a romantic novel about a feisty and chic young Chicago journalist who follows her heart to a Middle Eastern country and comes home with a great feature story… and possibly the love of her life. Laura is currently working on her second novel, Home Economics, about a 45-year-old mom on the verge of a nervous breakdown (the breakdown all moms would like to have but can’t afford to), whose dead mother-in-law starts speaking to her through a 1950s Sunbeam mixmaster. (Yes, exactly like the mixmasters on display in Tuesday Funk’s former home, Flourish).

We are happy to announce that our October 6th reading will take place upstairs at Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N. Clark Street (just south of Foster) in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood.

For those who haven’t been there yet, it’s a gorgeous restaurant and bar with some rave reviews and an impressive menu of beer and wine. So arrive early, grab a good table, and order some food before the reading starts at 7 PM.

Here’s a preview of Tuesday Funk #17:

RAYMOND L. BIANCHI poet and Cracked Slab Books co-founder joins us from Series A, MAGGIE KAST reads from her newly published memoir The Crack between the Worlds: a dancer’s memoir of loss, faith and family, solo performer ARLENE MALINOWSKI will bring her theater work to the Tuesday Funk stage, and LAURA TIEBERT will read from her novel in progress in which a woman’s dead mother-in-law starts talking to her from a 1950s Sunbeam mixmaster.

So mark your calendars. Invite your literary friends, your beer drinking friends, and your foodie friends. There’s going to be something for everybody!