I did a cartoon recently for the Cartoon Issue of my local alternative weekly in Vermont, Seven Days. It’s about the experience of seeing my book Fun Home turned into a musical. Well, it’s about a very small part of that process–to convey the whole bizarre experience in all its complexity would take a book. This is just a little essay. Every year Seven Days does an all-cartoon issue—they have journalists work with cartoonists and run all these great visual stories.
Also, here’s how to pronounce my name, in case you ever need to know. That link will take you to a site called Teaching Books. They have these audio links of all different authors telling stories about their names. Find your favorites here.
Yesterday I had to go to the DMV to renew my license. How many identification cards have I posed for throughout my life, how many moments of bureaucracy-induced anomie have been captured, laminated, and carried around in my pocket for years until replaced with the next iteration? Roughly seventeen, apparently. Here I am aging from 17 to 53 in 20 seconds.
I have a cartoon in the latest issue of The New Yorker. I happen to actually be in New York, for the Lambda Literary Awards last night, where I got to give Nicole Georges the first graphic novel prize, and an event with Alysia Abbott tonight to talk about her book Fairyland. So this afternoon I bought the magazine hot off the press at a newsstand in Columbus Circle. I’ve been reading the cartoons in The New Yorker since before I could read. So it’s very strange and wonderful to have my own work in there.
Hol and I are on our way to Charleston. So is the cast of the musical “Fun Home.” Tonight we’re going to do a presentation at the College of Charleston together. I think it’s going to be pretty amazing.
For a little context, here’s an article about it from the Times.
I’ve been posting stuff direct to Facebook about my marvelous adventures in New Zealand. Somehow it is just easier, sometimes. Anyhow, if you care to follow me there, uh…I’m not sure how it works…can you just click this link, I wonder? And then “like” it?
God.
It’s a “fan” page, not a personal page, and I’m always very confused about it.
We’ve been in New Zealand for two days now. It’s too beautiful to bother trying to put into words. My first event was a trip to the small seaside town of Paekakariki in a van with the hilarious mad professor Terry Castle. Here’s the scene outside the town hall where we spoke.
Terry’s book The Professor is a collection of her brilliant personal/critical essays plus a memoir about her early days in the trenches of academia and lesbiana. We had a fun conversation…
…then were feted by the lovely locals. This woman brought all her old DTWOF books to be signed.
This one brought her pink brassiere, which she deftly removed without dislodging her t-shirt.
At the ensuing community potluck, Terry and I were presented with this astonishing cake.
Here are Terry and Holly marveling at it.
Here’s the view from the house of our gracious hosts. How do people bear all this beauty?
Today there was more book festival activity. I did a conversation onstage with Moira Clunie, who is a friend of the great NZ cartoonist Dylan Horrocks. He has a new book out called Incomplete Works, and I will see a panel he’s on tomorrow morning. I love his work. It’s very smart and the quality of his line is deeply pleasing.
It’s very overwhelming being at events like this. So much going on, so many people. It’s exhausting but also energizing.
And people are so kind! We also had a great potluck dinner in Adelaide, hosted by our new pals Sal and Mary. Here is Sal, the kangaroo whisperer. She took us to a wildlife park where we saw kangaroos, emu, dingoes, koalas, and all manner of strange beasts.
Here’s I am feeding a kangaroo. A kangaroo for god’s sake!
Here’s a joey in its mother’s pouch as they both lounge on the grass.
Well this is all rather disjointed. But it’s the best I can do right now. Tomorrow New Zealand cartoonists and a trip to more botanical gardens. Oh. Here’s my new dorky hat that I got at the Melbourne botanical gardens.
And here are some other photos I didn’t manage to upload in Australia where the internet was so pricey. Me with the owners of the Hares and Hyenas bookstore.
And me in a photo these guys gave me that they took in 1997 at Book Expo America of Judith Katz, Nancy Bereano and me at the Firebrand Books booth. This is the pic where Hol says I look like an Amish preacher.
Last night I did a talk for the Wheeler Center here in this fancy old theater, The Athenaeum.
I never know what to expect when I do these things. Maybe 75 people came to my talk at the Adelaide Writer’s Festival cartoonist day event on Tuesday. And I’ve gotten used to large-ish but captive and studious audiences at college events. But last night in Melbourne hundreds and hundreds of people came, many of them lesbians of all ages. It was really cool, like olden days, a very lively raucous crowd.
Afterward in the lobby Joan Nestle came up to me! She lives here now with her Australian partner—I knew that, but had forgotten. She looks fucking fabulous. “I’m 73!” she said. But she looks exactly like she did the last time I saw her, which was in 1997.
It was an amazing night. Then this morning I bustled all around town doing 3 radio programs. And visiting the gay bookstore, Hares and Hyenas!
They’ve been around for 22 years. Here I am with the delightful owners.
They gave me this photo they’d taken in 1997 or so at Book Expo America of Judith Katz, Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books, who pubished my work for many years. And me—Hol said I look like an Amish preacher in this pic.
(pic)
God, you know what? This post has been extraordinarily difficult to put together and it is bedtime and I’m exhausted. I can’t upload these photos. Megabytes are apparently like gold ingots here in Australia. Hotel internet costs $30 AUD, and even after forking that over, as soon as you use up 1000MB (by, for example, checking FaceBook) they cut you off the fast connection and slow you to an ignominious crawl unless you’re willing to pay even more! How does anyone get anything done?
For the life of me I cannot upload all these images. you’ll just have to picture them until I get to New Zealand tomorrow…where things might not be any better megabyte-wise.
So you will miss seeing me in the dorkoriffic hat I bought at the botanical gardens to protect me from the relentless sun.
I can’t believe I’m in Australia. I left frigid snowbound Vermont almost a week ago. Made a quick visit to Savannah GA, where I spoke at the annual Spring Break convention of Sigma Tau Delta, a college English honor society—English Majors Gone Wild.
Then Hol and I flew through Dallas to Brisbane, and from Brisbane to Adelaide. I’d been really dreading the long flight to Australia. I have actually been invited here a couple times before, and always declined because I couldn’t imagine being confined to an airplane seat for 16 or 18 hours. But it turned out to be pretty pleasant. Crossing the International Date Line was confusing, but after two days I’m finally starting to get oriented. It’s summer here, very hot, with a hard relentless sun. It’s strange and magical to be so far from home, on the other side of the planet.
Just now I saw the night sky for the first time. There’s a lot of light pollution so I couldn’t be sure, but I think I saw the Southern Cross. And then across the sky I saw a very familiar yet slightly odd looking bunch of stars…Orion, upside down!
I’ve been at the Adelaide Writer’s Festival where I’ve met a lot of wonderful people. Lovely Australian dykes and cartoonists. Today I did a talk with the puckish and super charming Rabih Alameddine, whose work I am ashamed to say I only recently discovered.
Tomorrow we’re going to go see koalas. Koalas?! As I say, I can’t believe it.
Then, Melbourne. And on to Wellington, for Writers Week at the New Zealand Festival.
…you can still experience a lot of its magic on this amazing cast album. Plus there are extensive liner notes with great photos, a synopsis by Lisa Kron, and of course her amazing lyrics.
You can order it online here from PS Classics, but it should also be available on Feb. 25th wherever people get CDs. iTunes too I think but of course then you won’t get the physical package with the liner notes.
Here are some photos I took at the recording studio on the day they made the album last December. They’re not great photos but whatever, I was trying to shoot through the glass of the booth. Here you can see Joel Perez who plays Roy, Beth Malone who plays Alison, and Noah Hinsdale who plays my little brother John.
Here I am with the formidable Michael Cerveris who plays my father.
This is a not great shot of the most brilliant and melodious Judy Kuhn, who plays my mother. Interestingly, her posture in this candid hand-wringing shot is not unlike my mother’s. And that’s Roberta Colindrez on the right, who plays my college girlfriend Joan. (And also Tako on GIRLS!)
And here is the Great Kron.
And the Great Tesori, consulting with Chris Fenwick, the music director.
