Please join us for the Chicago release of our new over-sized coffee-table-crackin’ collection of the most elusive literary zine in America! Editor Hunter Kennedy will read along with a slew of contributors. We’re keeping details under wraps for now, in the Minus Times tradition of waiting till the last possible second to spring strangeness on you from out of nowhere. Mark your calendar with a big X for hidden treasure September 27th, 7pm at The Whistler.

Presented by featherproof books and Drag City record
s.
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/the-minus-times

About Minus Times:
The Minus Times Collected presents a compendium of twenty years of the improvisational literary zine, and features a full spectrum of writers, visual artists, musicians, and comedians (Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick deWitt, Wells Tower, Chan Marshall, and David Eggers to name a few) between 1992-2012. Writers as illustrators, musicians as comedians; anything goes–Minus Times was a platform for pioneering the “fresh;” and was created with ethics of free-exchange, collaboration and experimentation. This new facsimile edition presents the original type-written zines, beautifully letterpressed, and encompasses the zine’s span in its entirety.

The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty Issues(1992–2012)
Edited by Hunter Kennedy

Many writers and artists have toiled in obscurity for years before the culture has caught a whiff of their genius. But how many have spent 20 years toiling in surreality? The alternate universe that editor Hunter Kennedy has built around a little magazine called The Minus Times stands apart, and stands the test of time. Like anything good, and truly underground, issues are notoriously difficult to track down. To say nothing of the complete set.

The Minus Times began as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits banged out on a 1922 Underwood typewriter. The visionarily narrow-minded record label Drag City got behind it, and word leaked out about a magazine with a strange new smirk on its face. With few rules and fewer chaperones, it became the breeding ground for the next generation of American fiction. In retrospect, it seems almost prescient in its selection of writers like Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick deWitt, and Wells Tower. Not a page goes by without sly newspaper collages or striking illustrations by the likes of David Eggers and Brad Neely. Up crop interviews with folks like Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, Chan Marshall, and a yet to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the-nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all. The collection is prefaced by Patrick deWitt (prize-winning author of Ablutions, The Sisters Brothers) and includes 60 new pages of never-before-seen ramblings and prophecy from its best contributors. There’s so much stuff that the book needed not just one publisher, but two! A unique collaboration was forged between Drag City, the Chicago-based record label who got in on the ground floor (in this, as in all buildings) and featherproof books, Chicago-based fan-boys and print (leather) fetishists.

Contributors:
In 20 years and 30 issues, The Minus Times amassed an impressive list of authors, poets, artists, and musicians. Contributors to this volume include:
Eric Amling, Lucy Anderson, Thelonius Bakkom, Porter Barron, Sam Beam, William Belford, Hudson Bell, David Berman, John A. Bernard, Sudeep Bhatia, Rob Bingham, Buster Black, Robert Bloom, Mark Bodnar, Daniel Borzutzky, Margaret Brown, Sam Brumbaugh, Dan Clowes, Stephen Colbert, Pamela Colloff, Britt Daniel, Rob Davenport, D.V. DeVincentis, Patrick deWitt, Kathy Egan, Dave Eggers, Mike Fellows, Graham Foust, Robert Frank, Darrell Freeman, Jason Fulford, Colin Gagon, Hope Gangloff, Neil Michael Hagerty, Barry Hannah, Mercer Hardee, Peter Harper, Harrison Haynes, Peter Henry, Victor Hernandez, Ted Holland, Brian Howe, Jeff Johnson, Forest Juziuk, Steve Keene, Anne-Laur Keib, Hunter Kennedy, Thomas Kennedy, Gerald Kepler, Stephen Kessler, Wasiq Khan, Harmony Korine, Demetri Lallas, Alix Lambert, Michael Laus, Mary Mack Leonard, Caroline Linder, Sam Lipsyte, Jason Logan, Hank McCarthy, Theodore McDermott, Tom McGuane, Michael McLeod, Quenton Miller, Marc Minsker, Jason Molina, Matt Peters, Andrew Pope, Dr. Georges Postic, Stephen Malkmus, Chan Marshall, Austin McKenna, Colin Meloy, Bob Nastanovich, Brad Neely, Will Oldham, Peter Reynolds, Mark Richard, David Roth, Jeff Rotter, Tim Rutili, Jay Ruttenberg, Leanne Shapton, Kim Sillen, Bennett Simpson, Ethan Smith, Rollen Stewart, Matt Sweeney, Mike Topp, Wells Tower, Bill Verner, Brent Van Daley, Joe Wenderoth

About Hunter Kennedy:
Editor Hunter Kennedy began publishing The Minus Times in 1992, the same year he graduated from the University of Virginia. Over the past 20 years, he has worked in cabinetry shops, magazines, architecture firms and a foundry to pay for typing ribbons. His writing has appeared in Open City, The Baffler, Vice, T Magazine, Garden & Gun, and J&L Illustrated #1. Kennedy lives on the fringes of a popular lifestyle community in South Carolina.

For more information, contact Kellie Morgan
kellie@dragcity.com

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