June 28th, 2011
My editor had an intervention with me last week…remember the book I’ve been working on for the past five years? Well, I finally really have to turn it in. By the end of the year. So my editor suggested gently that considering how much work I have left, perhaps going to Chicago for the fall semester was not the best idea, and could I maybe switch my visit to the spring?
Fortunately this seems to be okay with the Chicago people.
I’m working hard, though. Here I am posing as my therapist for a scene I have to draw.
Today June’s fascinating gay bar series on Slate takes an in-depth look at Stonewall. Plus there’s a funny slide show about gay bar names.
June 27th, 2011
But I wanted to tell you about our pal June’s series about gay bars on Slate this week. In part two, she collects stories from a bunch of lgbt writers about their first time in a gay bar. I have a little squib there about my frightening visit to Satan’s in Akron, Ohio.
June could not have asked for a better hook for her piece than the image of people at the Stonewall Inn over the weekend, cheering the passage of same-sex marriage in New York. If that’s where the modern gay rights movement began, perhaps that’s where it ended too. At any rate, if we continue racking up civil rights like this, it’s hard to imagine the institution of “pride” persisting much longer.
June 8th, 2011
No, I haven’t transitioned.
But I will be transporting myself to Chicago for the fall to be a Mellon Fellow at the new Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago.
(old file photo of me and Hol in Chicago, just for atmosphere)
This is pretty cool. The whole idea of the Center is to mix up practitioners and theorists in various fields. There’s an architect and a physicist, for example. A choreographer/dancer and composers. And me, a cartoonist, paired with my friend the comics scholar Hillary Chute. We’re going to teach a course on autobiographical comics.
I will also be drawing like crazy to finish the book I’ve been working on for the past forty years, a memoir about my mother.
It feels a bit daunting to have all of this stuff colliding, but I feel like I’ve come out of the woods on the book, so maybe it’ll be all right.
I’m kind of psyched about getting to be part of an academic community. I have a recurring dream that I get to go back to college, and it’s always a very pleasant feeling.
