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Literary Happening: The Dollar Store Super Summer Tour of Awesomeness
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The Awesomeness is here. Source: Brooklinebooksmith.com
featherproof books’ Dollar Store Super Summer Tour of Awesomeness comes to the Brookline Booksmith this Tuesday at 7pm.
In case the title didn’t tip you off, the event promises to be everything but your average author reading. For one, there are seven of Chicago’s best authors reading: Aaron Burch, Blake Butler, Zach Dodson, Amelia Gray, Mary Hamilton, Jack Jemc, and Patrick Somerville. The evening will also feature appearances from MC Mr. Napkins, artist Carla Barger and Eugenia Williamson of literago.com.
Then there’s the concept behind the name. For each show, the writers are given items purchased at a local dollar store (from “mundane to insane”) which they must use in some way in a piece of short writing. Each author’s item is either put on display or actually utilized during his or her performance.
The tour is aimed at changing the formality of author readings. “We basically want to have a night of storytelling that has the atmosphere of friends sitting together, listening, laughing and getting drunk,” say creators Jonathan Messinger and Abraham Levitan on the tour’s website. They encourage attendees to stick around after the performance to have a few drinks and get to know the authors.
Messinger is Editor-in-Chief of the tour’s host publisher, featherproof books. The Chicago-based indie press takes the same kind of unconventional approach to publishing that the tour does to readings. Besides publishing perfect-bound full-length fiction, featherproof offers what it calls mini-books, which present a unique synthesis of digital and tactile experiences. From the publisher’s website: “Our mini-books carefully designed short stories and novellas that may be downloaded from our website, printed and constructed by the reader, inviting all ten fingers to take part in the book-making process.”
featherproof’s relationship to its authors is different in that the writers are involved in every step of the publication process. At larger publishing houses, the author generally has little or no say beyond the editing stage. Aspects such as the layout and cover image of the book are determined by the middlemen of the publishing establishment. Not so at featherproof, whose innovation extends even to its merchandise. Case in point is the letterTee, which features an image of a blank sheet of paper where one can write washable messages, phone numbers, letters, poems and flash fiction using a special pen. For strokes of genius, featherproof provides a letterTee hall of fame.
Tuesday’s event will be free. For more freebies related to featherproof, go here.
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