Author Events

Arkadin Cinema & Bar and Left Bank Books presents Tupelo-born filmmaker John Michael McCarthy's first no-budget feature film Teenage Tupelo for a screening and book signing event!

See the film! Buy the book! Meet the filmmaker!

For tickets to the screening visit Arkadin's website HERE.

You can preorder the book now to pick up at the event to guarantee your copy. Limited copies will be available for sale at Arkadin Cinema at the event.

About the book:

In 1995 Something Weird Video released filmmaker (and former Fantagraphics cartoonist) John Michael McCarthy's Elvis-obsessed autobiographical bump and grind Super 8 cinematic oddity Teenage Tupelo, and co-produced by exploitation king David F. Friedman ( She Freak, 2000 Maniacs). Memphis instrumental combo Impala provided the scintillating score set to the swaying rhythms of starlet D'Lana Tunnell who plays McCarthy's mother. The music was produced by legendary Sun records-era Roland Janes and released on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label. Almost thirty years later, this obscure little cult film continues to be remembered. Now Fantagraphics Books unleashes a mammoth volume dedicated to one of the last underground sexploitation films of the 20th century: a nudie cutie time capsule of art, essays, and reviews, along with photos of the beautiful starlets who appeared in Teenage Tupelo.
 

About the author:

Tupelo-born filmmaker John Michael McCarthy's first no-budget feature film was based on his one-off comic from a Fantagraphics imprint, Damselvis, Daughter Of Helvis (1994). Three decades later, he squares the circle with this lavish coffee-table tie-in to his second feature, Teenage Tupelo (1995). McCarthy's other films include The Sore Losers (1997), Superstarlet A.D. (2000), and Destroy Memphis (2016).

Observable Readings – Fall 2023

Matt Donovan & Elizabeth Hoover
Monday, September 18
7:00 p.m. (CDT) – In-person at High Low + Livestream Event
$5 | suggested donation

Enjoy the livestream here:
https://stlouispoetrycenter.org/events/observable-readings-september-2023
Or here:
https://www.facebook.com/stlouispoetrycenter/live

ABOUT THE POETS

MATT DONOVAN is the author, most recently, of The Dug-Up Gun Museum (BOA 2022) and Missing Department (Visual Studies Workshop, Fall 2023), a collection of art and poetry made in collaboration with the artist Ligia Bouton. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. Donovan serves as Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

ELIZABETH HOOVER is the author of the archive is all in present tense, winner of the 2021 Barrow Street Book Prize. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the North American Review, Kenyon Review, and StoryQuarterly. She teaches in the English Department at Webster University in St. Louis.

The Observable Readings series is supported in part by: