This was a busy fall: I traveled to SPX, MICE, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, CAB, Short Run in Seattle, and finally the NTCE in Baltimore. My last stop is the Woods Hole Public Library on Dec 30.
Both Persephone’s Garden and Charlotte Bronte Before Jane Eyre debuted at the Small Press Expo outside of Washington, DC this September. I shared a table with pals Jennifer Hayden, Summer Pierre, and Ellen Lindner.
Next was the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, where Dan Mazur chaired a panel on historical Biography—it was packed!
Friday before MICE I went to an evening with Lynda Barry and Chris Ware. The wave of their energy has been carrying me along ever since. I sat next to Cara Bean, friend and inspiring cartoonist and educator.
After the panel at MICE and signing some books (thanks to Million Year Picnic) I drove to Brattleboro for the Literary Festival. On Sunday AM, Amongst the Liberal Elite author Elly Lonnon and I shared a stage—and a lot of laughs—people got up early to join us! Later that afternoon Madeline Miller gave a great talk on her best selling novel Circe. How to communicate my deep connection with Greek Mythology?
At Comics Art Brooklyn I was based at the Secret Acres table with Sadyiah Abjani and Keren Katz. Summer Pierre and I went to Lauren Weinstein’s interview of Ailine Kominski-Crumb. Life is Art and vice versa—at least that’s what I left pondering. So I keep going to yoga classes at Sangha Studio in Burlington.
On Sunday Ellen Lindner and I had a great time visiting all three Mets in one day: The Cloisters, The Main Met, and Met Breuer (for the Vija Selmans show.) #threeMets.
Several days later I was on the plane to Seattle for Short Run. I was a Special Guest, invited by my old friend and board member Meredith Li-Volmer. We had met at the University of Oregon Honors College in Topics in Modern Math 30 years earlier. We both look exactly the same. Short Run takes place in a beautiful light-filled space, and it was great to be a part of a gathering of a community of west-coast cartoonists there, and to table next to Ellen Lindner and Elise Dietrich. A few months before the festival I met Dash-Grant winner Rumi Hara, and am looking forward to her book with Drawn and Quarterly next year. A page from Charlotte Bronte Before Jane Eyre is in a show at the Fantagraphics Store in Georgetown, with a lively opening party on Friday night.
The National Conference of Teachers of English in Baltimore was a revelation! It’s a gathering of teachers excited to learn and expand their curricula with new books and to meet authors excited to share their work. I’m grateful to Disney/ Hyperion for bringing me, and for luxurious accommodations in Baltimore! I signed more than 80 books and asked many teachers about their experience with the Brontes’ books. While Jane Eyre is not required reading any more (as it was for me in 9th grade) many teachers and librarians told me that it’s still their favorite book, and they recommend it to AP English students in high school. It was thrilling to meet authors Rebecca Roanhorse, Minh Le, Zetta Elliott, and Kwame Mbalia. Here we are on a water taxi after a lovely dinner with brilliant organizer Dina Sherman and a group of educators.
In the middle of December I presented the book to a group of 50 6th graders from Edmunds Middle School. About half had heard of Jane Eyre, and I was impressed by their attention and the questions they asked: “Will there be a sequel?” No, because after the book ends, everyone dies. “Who is my favorite Bronte?” I can’t decide—I love them all!
Now that a busy and challenging first semester with the bright and brilliant students at The Center for Cartoon Studies is over, I’m glad to be home and to get to work this winter on what’s next!