Chip Kidd

This is apparently what we’ve come to: In an age when we’re reminded on an almost daily basis that nobody reads books anymore, one of the biggest celebrities in publishing is a guy who designs book jackets. That, of course, would be Chip Kidd, the graphic designer with a classic quarterback’s name. You’d think maybe the guy would be content with having designed fifteen-hundred covers and counting—his work is ubiquitous and, to his credit, almost always ridiculously stylish and unmistakable—but you’d be wrong. Turns out Kidd also writes novels, and on the heels of his debut The Cheese Monkeys (an art school yarn) comes The Learners (a novel with a lot of ruminations on graphic design). You certainly can’t accuse the ambitious Kidd of not writing about what he knows. The publisher says the new book also involves “advertising, electroshock torture, suicide, a giant dog, potato chips, and the Holocaust.”

7-8 p.m., Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6174.