Who: Gina Frangello, Greg Boose, Amy Guth, Claire Bidwell Smith, Irene Zion, & Raise High the Roof Beam (“the Arcade Fire meets the Muppets”)
What: The Nervous Breakdown
Where: The Whistler (2421 N Milwaukee)
When: Tuesday, September 22 at 7pm – free!

We are not exactly sure what the Nervous Breakdown (NB) is, however we have had them and are particularly excited about this one.  Also we really admired the place on the NB blog where Aleksander Malik described some of his: adolescent misery, cherry season in Menerbes, a soft core porn audition, bigotry, heartbreak and goatees, Oktoberfest, problems of language, homelessness, depression, arguing neighbors, sympathy with homicidal maniacs, returning a robe, my father, my mother, the night sky in Kenya, kissing, my grandparents, abortion, Hemingway, time and semen. Oh! Also we know it’s a spin-off of the Nervous Breakdown “online literary collective,” has sibling reading series in NY and LA, and will be hosted by the lovely Gina Frangello, whose book of short stories, Slut Lullabies, streets in 2010. (Bonus! We are totally Facebook friends with Gina, and her status update says there’ll be goody bags, too.) So basically this is like a totally important moment where Chicago gets to increase the radness of something that’s already quite rad, while drinking classy cocktails. See you there.