Okay, yes, we might have a little ice on the ground, but any day when the number of readers at Tuesday Funk does not exceed the temperature in Fahrenheit is a good day in Chicago. So take a break from your Seasonal Affective Disorder, come out to Hopleaf tonight (Tuesday, December 7th), and join your hosts Sara Ross and William Shunn for the 29th entry in our theoretically infinite Tuesday Funk reading series.

We're bringing you poetry, fiction, essays, and more from the likes of Johanna Stein, Anne Calcagno, Jotham Burrello, Fraser Coffeen, and Naomi Buck Palagi. That's five great readers for the mere price of a beer. Or maybe two. (Beers, that is. We're pretty sure about the reader count. Though one never knows what might happen behind that mike.)

And yes, today it has also been 69 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but please, no tasteless jokes about how the battle went down, okay? Too soon.

Hopleaf is at 5148 N. Clark St. in Chicago. The reading begins at 7:30 pm in the upstairs lounge. The lounge opens at 7:00 pm. Arrive early for a seat!

As always, the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf is cash-only, so be prepared. Remember also that no food is allowed in the upstairs lounge, and only those 21 and over can be admitted.

Johanna is a writer/director/comedian/forward/slash/abuser whose work ranges from award-winning animated kids shows for places like Disney, Nickelodeon and PBS... to adult humor for places like the New York Times, Comedy Central, and VH-1... to really, really adult humor like this dirty little film short that has offended and titillated film festival audiences across North America.

Johanna recently wrote about her nipples in Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine (St. Martin's Press)—you can buy it here; it makes a real nice Channukah present. If you'd like to learn more about Johanna, see more of her work, or email her about the $50K that is awaiting her in Nigeria, you can find her through her website, www.jojostein.com.

Join Tuesday Funk tomorrow (December 7th) at 7:30 p.m. at Hopleaf's upstairs bar to hear Johanna and all of our talented readers!

Here at Tuesday Funk, we occasionally like to point you toward fun and worthwhile things to do in Chicago on those thirty lonely days of the month when you're not at Hopleaf for one of our high-class literary extravaganzas. So if you want to get to know some interesting folks you might not cross paths with otherwise, you should definitely check out Mac 'n Cheese Productions.

Mac 'n Cheese Productions helps satiate the desire of people to grow their community via non-traditional, affordable, comfortable, and fun ways.

• Minglers: People come to a converted toy-factory home for an evening of expanding networks (social, romantic, professional). The caveat—everyone must come solo.
• Coffee: People meet at a coffeehouse for a facilitated discussion on all things entrepreneurial.
• Smatterings: An e-newsletter that has a myriad of info, from job openings to grant opportunities to activity suggestions to mechanic referrals.
• Special Events: Example > Dance Experiment: Seventeen strangers who can't dance and who are scared to perform in front of others rehearse for three months in preparation for a performance in front of an audience of 350.

For more info, check out www.macncheeseproductions.com. And tell 'em Tuesday Funk sent you!

Fraser Coffeen is one of the founding editors of and a regular contributor at HeadKickLegend.com. Dedicated to presenting the latest news and analysis on the world of kickboxing, Muay Thai, and Mixed Martial Arts, HeadKickLegend was recently named one of the top 20 worldwide MMA sites by MMAPayout.com. 

Prior to his work with HKL,Fraser was a contributor at K-1Legend and Total MMA. In addition to covering kickboxing and mixed martial arts, Fraser has written a number of screenplays and radio plays with an emphasis on horror. Fraser has also worked in the weird underbelly of the Chicago arts scene as a member of the critically acclaimed and now deceased Defiant Theatre, where he honed his love for visceral, exciting entertainment. This love for the odd side of the road led him to create the two-person sideshow act Numbskull, the Human Blockhead in collaboration with Jennifer Ann Coffeen, which the pair has performed throughout the Midwest.

Today, Fraser also works as a theatrical blood effects artist.  When not writing or doing blood work, Fraser has been a professional wrestling ring announcer, a comic book character for Alex Ross, studied clowning and physical theater, and worked with numerous Chicago theater companies.

Join Tuesday Funk on December 7th at 7:30 p.m. at Hopleaf's upstairs bar to hear Fraser and all of our talented readers!

For stories in her collection Pray For Yourself, Anne Calcagno received the San Francisco Foundation Phelan Literary Award, an NEA and two IAC Fellowships. Her fiction has appeared in The North American Review, TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, and other publications. She won an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award for her story "What's Yours?" published in Other Voices.

A dual national, Italian and American, she is also editor of Travelers Tales: Italy, which won Foreward's Silver Medal for Best Travel Book of the Year. Her reviews and travel writing have appeared in the New York Times, the Italian American Historical Society, New City, the Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Tribune. She's recently completed a novel about dog fighting in Chicago, titled LOVE LIKE A DOG. Calcagno teaches in the School of the Art Institute's MFA in Writing program.


Join Tuesday Funk on December 7th at 7:30 p.m. at Hopleaf's upstairs bar to hear Anne and all of our talented readers!

Naomi Buck Palagi has made her way to Northwest Indiana via many stops, starting with a homesteader childhood in rural Kentucky, complete with goats and lots of bare feet, some years in the Mississippi Delta, an Oberlin College degree, and 5 years in and around the Chicago Theater scene.

She enjoys shaping all sorts of tangible things—wood, fabric, sound, words. She has work published or upcoming in Otoliths, Moria, Spoon River Review, Blue Fifth Review, and Wicked Alice, among others. Her chapbook silver roof tantrum is recently out from dancing girl press.

Join Tuesday Funk on December 7th at 7:30 p.m. at Hopleaf's upstairs bar to hear Naomi and all of our talented readers!

Jotham Burrello teaches in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago where he directs the Publishing Lab, a resource for emerging writers. His multimedia company, Elephant Rock Productions has produced two critically acclaimed instructional DVDs for writers and will publish Patricia McNair's story collection "The Temple of Air" in early 2011.

He lives, writes and farms flowers in lovely Ashford, Connecticut, with his wife and three little boys. You can read his essay about moving to New England, "Speed of Life," online at Drunken Boat.

Join Tuesday Funk on December 7th at 7:30 p.m. at Hopleaf's upstairs bar to hear Jotham and all of our talented readers!

Take a well-deserved break from the holiday rat-race with Tuesday Funk and our lineup of readers both naughty and nice—JOHANNA STEIN, ANNE CALCAGNO, JOTHAM BURRELLO, FRASER COFFEEN, NAOMI BUCK PALAGI, and possibly a bonus poem from one of our hosts. No mere stocking-stuffers, these! You'll be glad you spent your money here on beer instead of on presents for those whiny nieces and nephews.

Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, December 7, 2010, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early, stake out a table in the upper room, and grab a beer from John at the cash-only bar. We start seating at 7:00 pm and no earlier. Admission is always free. Stay afterward for some great Belgian-style food downstairs!

Please bring your friends and show your support for Tuesday Funk. Help us deliver a record turnout so we can keep staging these readings at Hopleaf, the finest food-and-drink establishment on the north side.

Please also become a fan of Tuesday Funk on Facebook, so you never miss an invitation to our readings. And watch this space over the next dozen days for spotlight posts about our readers.

If you missed our Tuesday Funk reading for November—which you probably didn't, because we had about our best turnout of all time—but if you were among the unfortunate few who missed out, here are some of the amazing things you didn't see:

Sondra Morin knocked our socks off with poems from her new chapbook Inviting the Expanse (which we were able to buy direct from her, but which you can pick up at Quimby's, The Boring Store, or Transistor for a mere five bones).

Kristin Lueke melted our faces with her poetry, some of which you can read here.

Lauryn Allison Lewis froze our blood with her short story "Bear vs. Snake," which only means you should not miss her when she debuts her mixed-media-performance-art-reading this coming Sunday, November 14, at Come Home Chicago at Underground Wonder Bar.

Dave Snyder rattled our bones and our brains with his erudite poems, which you probably won't read in his rooftop farming blog at the Huffington Post.

And Lori Ann Stephens, our special guest from Texas, brought the house down with excerpts from her novel Song of the Orange Moons, excerpts we can't ... er ... really describe to you without saying that you had to be there. But you can lay hands on her novel (which comes out November 16) at Amazon or Barnes & Noble and fill yourself in.

So that's what you missed at the last Tuesday Funk. The good news is that we'll be back at Hopleaf on Tuesday, December 7 with an all-new slate of readers, including Johanna Stein, Fraser Coffeen, Naomi Buck Palagi and more. We'll have further announcements about the December lineup soon, but mark your calendars now. You won't want to be left out in the cold next month!

Chicago Writers Association inducts the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame initial class on November 20, 2010, at the Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium (3701 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue, Chicago IL).

The Hall of Fame's inductees include:

• Nelson Algren (1909-1981)
• Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
• Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
• Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
• Louis "Studs" Terkel (1912-2008)
• Richard Wright (1908-1960)

Featured guests for the ceremony include emcee Rick Kogan, Stuart Dybek, Audrey Niffenegger and Sara Paretsky. Speak Easy Ensemble and Lori Lippitz are among performers.

The evening begins at 6 p.m. Ticket price includes pre- and post-ceremony reception.
Tickets may be purchased at http://clhofinduction.eventbrite.com/