THE2NDHAND

EVENT: So you think you have nerves of steel? Installment 2

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 21:14:48 -0600

SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL? WHERE: Whistler, 2421 N.Milwaukee, Logan Square, Chicago WHEN: Monday, Feb. 8, 8 PM (readings at 9) FEATURING The Slide author Kyle Beachy Kate Duva, author of our latest broadsheet & recent THE2NDHAND contributor Irene Westcott w/ host Harold Ray (aka ACM fiction editor and THE2NDHAND coeditor Jacob Knabb) Readings will be preceded by musical from a trio of Nora Barton on cello and Eliza Bangert and Allie Deaver on flute. Billie Howard of Paver assists.

SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE NERVES OF STEEL?, by Jill Summers

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 21:14:41 -0600

The first-run work growing from our Chicago reading series of the same title. Summers is a regular on the Chicago lit scene, and to THE2NDHAND's halls -- read on for something between philosophical exegesis and short fiction, rumination on the notion of steel and nerves made of it, in which the shit flies, literally and...

MINNIE LEE's FUNERAL, by Anne Whitehouse

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 19:14:35 -0600

"Fall Love" author and poet (Blessing and Curses, most recently) Anne Whitehouse has penned a magnificent funeral tale here, told about the death proceedings of African-American Minnie Lee by the young white girl whose parents, Minnie's employers, are "guests of honor" at the funeral.

KIND OF LIKE BIRDS, by Mairead Case

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:40:27 -0600

Debuted in older form at THE2NDHAND's July 2009 reading at Chicago's Hungry Brain, this story from lit new site Literago.org force Mairead Case narrates the life of a teacher of juvenile offenders. A+ treatment, after all -- watch Case at www.literago.org.

EVENT: BRICK, a reading series

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:41:57 -0600

--- IN NASHVILLE:
BRICK | a reading series launches! 7 p.m. Friday, Mar 12, 2009 Portland Brew, 1921 Eastland Ave., Nashville Hosted by THE2NDHAND editor Todd Dills with an assist by Keyhole Magazine and Press publisher Peter Cole, BRICK is a coproduction that every other month will feature Nashville, regional and touring prose writers -- you'll undoubtedly recognize many in coming months from these halls, including the three featured in the first edition, tip-top, from north to south: Louisville, Ky., writer Jason Jordan is author of two collections forthcoming from avant-garde Six Gallery Press, Cloud and Other Stories and Powering the Devil's Circus, the last a novella paired with several shorts which is a strangely delightful mix of sincerity and absurdity -- each half bolstering the power of the other -- with an honesty of gesture uncommon in these times of narrative duplicity. His work has been published widely, including in both Keyhole and THE2NDHAND. Find him on Facebook or at the site for the online magazine he founded and continues to edit, decomP. East Nashville's own Eric Durchholz is the man behind the recently released novel Heartless, set in and around the bars and shuffling masses at Woodland and 11th and... that other street. A veteran of the nascent Nashville performance scene, Durchholz is also the author of the novels iNVERSION and The Promise of Eden, working as a graphic artist in multimedia. For an excerpt from Heartless, visit heartless.me or the excerpt we published several months back. Prose writer and teacher Lydia Ship lives in Atlanta, where she's likewise a contributing editor to the Chattahoochee Review; her stories, including flash fiction running with the weirdly sublime feel of a good D. Barthelme joint, have appeared in numerous magazines, including THE2NDHAND as well as Neon, A Capella Zoo, Pedestal, Night Train, New South and others.

MIXTAPE: HOW TO LOSE A TAIL, by Melissa Garrard

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:19:31 -0600

After "Can't Touch This"/M.C. Hammer, Garrard's mini fiction is the latest in THE2NDHAND's ongoing "Mixtape," a series of short stories about/inspired by songs.

THE2NDHAND broadsheet 33.1, featuring 1997, by C.T. Ballentine

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:40:58 -0600

In 2007, THE2NDHAND coeditor C.T. Ballentine toured with the Chicago band 1997, intending to pen a novelistic account of the tour. In the intervening months, circumstances both monetary and creative intervened to keep the project from becoming a reality. Nonetheless, Ballentine garnered much gunpowder from the experience, and his explosive distillation of the lot is here, in this Feb. 2010 first in our mini-broadsheet series in 8.5-by-11-inch format. We encourage readers to print pages 1 and 2 on the front and back sides, respectively, of somewhat heavy paper, folding once if desired, and distribute hand-to-hand, DIY style in mini-stacks in your neighborhoods' establishments' bathrooms and other reading-friendly spaces, or however you see fit. For more about the band 1997, visit their site. For more from Ballentine, including his 2006-07 novella "Friedrich Nietzsche Waits for a Date," follow this link. This issue also features a short by longtime THE2NDHAND contributor Doug Milam, author of the wonderful collection Still the Confusion. HAND with the personal epistemology of the accident...

BASEBALL, by Alec Niedenthal

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:39:15 -0600

I stopped my dad in the kitchen. I moved a wicker chair in front of him. "Stop," I said. "Is mom going crazy?" I said.

WING & FLY: NERVES OF STEEL / WORK IN PROGRESS... by Todd Dills

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:31:06 -0600

THE2NDHAND's editor Todd Dills dares Chicago to join THE2NDHAND Thursday, Jan 14, for the newest regular feature on the crowded Chicago reading series scene -- or "bit player," as Dills jokes here,

HIDEOUS BOUNTY: LIFEBOAT

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:34:41 -0600

Find here the newest in the hideously comic illustrated series, a beautifully mannered yet cosmic distillation of man unmoored. Artist Andrew Davis brings it to you from Bloomington, Ind., where he works with ceramics, college students, comics and paint -- the series began in November 2008.

UNBEARABLE LIKENESS, by Christopher Fullerton

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:49:22 -0600

Ghoti Mag editor Fullerton starts the New Year off right with a tale of the horror of mistaken identity, and madness...

ROBOBROTHER, by Lydia Ship

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:07:49 -0600

Atlanta writer and Chattahoochee Review contributing editor Ship debuts at THE2NDHAND.com with this story about a neglected bit of less-than-simple machinery.

BROADSHEET no. 33 released, featuring Kate Duva, C.T. Ballentine

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 10:47:45 -0600

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER, by Chicago resident and native Kate Duva, is THE2NDHAND’s 33rd broadsheet. Duva's been plying the brains of THE2NDHAND readers for several years now, and her mix of arch-weird with arch-real makes for a explosively brittle manifestation of reality in this the longest story she's published in these halls, about a young woman's sojourn at what she sees as the edges of American civilization, working as a nurse in state group homes for aging mentally challenged people. Catch Duva Feb. 8, 2010, at Whistler in Chicago at the second installment of our new reading series, So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel? This issue also features a short by THE2NDHAND coeditor C.T. Ballentine.