Angoulême

January 26th, 2007

It’s late and I’m nearly hallucinating with exhaustion. But here are just a few items from my day.

A film clip of my TGV ride from Tours to Angoulême, where I’m attending this giant international comics festival. Check it out! I didn’t speed up the film. That’s how fast we were going. I wish we had trains like this in our godforsaken gridlocked country.

I spent a somewhat bewildering day at the Festival International de la Bande Desinée, doing interviews, signing books, and wandering around in a sleep-deprived stupor. My job is to hang around my publisher’s booth, see photo. That’s my editor Jean-Luc, and Marie.

I did a signing, and made little awkward sketches in peoples’ books, because that’s what you’re supposed to do at comics festivals. But lemme tell ya, I felt a little ridiculous sitting next to this guy Hippolyte, a fucking genius who created these elaborate watercolors for everyone of the Robert Louis Stevenson pirate story he illustrated.
Here I am following Jean-Luc through the throng. I’m happy to say that I saw no one dressed in a spandex superhero costume.

But I did spot the Dark Knight himself.

After a lovely (but in the  French style, very late and lingering) dinner with some people from my publisher and the amazing autobiographical cartoonist Fabrice Neaud, whose work has inexplicably not been translated into English, and with whom I’m doing an event with tomorrow–I have retired to my very non-Ritz Carlton, ultra-budget French chain motel. I don’t care. I’m so fried I could probably sleep in the town square. Not that I’m anywhere near the lovely, medieval town square. Then must have thought that as an American I’d be more comfortable out here among the car dealerships and the Buffalo Grill, which is right next door.

bunch of things

January 26th, 2007

I’ve been so crazed lately what with this trip to the Angouleme festival and trying to get work done before I left that I’ve neglected to mention some important stuff.

Fun Home won the Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fish Nonfiction Award from the American Library Association’s GLBT Round Table. This is a really great honor. As you may know, I have a bit of a librarian fetish. So what could be better than winning a prize from a bunch of them?

FH has also been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in the comic book category.

And I also just won an Alice B. Reader’s Appreciation Medal. It’s a prize awarded to lesbian fiction writers. The committee decided cartoons could count.

And if you live in Vermont, I have some work in a show called FineToon: The Art of Vermont Cartoonists at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe. It opens today, and it looks like a really interesting show. There’s stuff by my fellow (and I do mean fellow) Vermonters Ed Koren, James Kochalka, Harry Bliss, Frank Miller… I had no idea Frank Miller lived in Vermont. Huh.

Tours

January 26th, 2007

This is just a quick note. I have to rush to catch my train to Angouleme.

Here, at last, is a photo of the famous Maoist orange cake, being displayed by Helene Tison. Her girlfriend Ghanima made it.

Here’s the classroom full of patient people at the University of Tours yesterday, waiting while we sorted out our Powerpoint Problems.

Here’s Fritz the elephant, a Barnum circus elephant who died on tour in Tours. A long time ago.

Here’s a little movie of an interview I did on Wednesday in Paris. Just so you can get a sense of what it’s like here. LIght up a cigarette for the full effect.