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sketch diary 2/14. Snow Day.

February 14th, 2007

Today I almost killed my visitor from London, Helen Sandler. Read the rest of this entry »

blogswap

February 13th, 2007

Helen here. This feels highly experimental and postmodern. It has just taken us about an hour to figure out how Alison and I can swap blogs for one post. Anyway, i’m in her house in the woods and Alison tells me that if we stepped outside right now we would die from the cold, so it’s a little like a hostage situation with free stir-fry.

Earlier she somehow persuaded me (an unfit city girl in new long-johns and what i am reliably informed are the wrong kind of winter hiking boots) to go snowshoeing, which is where you put tennis-racket-type things on your feet and walk in the snow. But you probably know that. We saw where the deer had spent the night. Here’s Alison pointing out their ‘deer-beds’ as she endearingly put it. I think she looks like a knight.

She filmed me, i photographed her, and now we are sitting next to each blogging about it. From a ten-minute experience during which i fell down three times, we sure got a lot of mileage.

It has suddenly struck me that some of you might choose to comment on this post, which is kind of intimidating to me. So now i think i’ll go and eat a chocolate.

Nice meeting you,
H

guestblogger

February 13th, 2007

My friend Helen Sandler is visiting from the UK. We’ve been talking about how stressful we’re finding it to maintain our blogs. So to give ourselves a break, we’re going to swap.

cartoon playground

February 6th, 2007

Funny Times has created a site where you can make your own cartoons. I guess I can retire now. Actually, though, it’s pretty cool.

stranger than fiction

February 6th, 2007

Today Nerve.com put up their comics issue. It includes an interview with me about Fun Home with a guy named Peter Smith. I had a good time talking to him, and during our conversation he revealed to me that his mother had just written a memoir about her father. Who’s your mother? I Read the rest of this entry »

autobugography

February 6th, 2007

I’m sorry I’ve been absent from the blog recently. It’s not because of anything anyone said! I’ve just been really overwhelmed with stuff. I haven’t even had a chance to read the Salon article about author blogs yet. I’ve been trying to get some important work done, and dealing with all the backlog of administrative things that built up while I was in France for a week. Not to mention the Read the rest of this entry »

Pas de tables

February 1st, 2007

Here I am having dinner in Paris Monday night. Did you know that in France, they have no tables? It’s true. This was a lovely meal I had at Hélène & Ghanima’s apartment. Hélène teaches at the University of Tours, and arranged the academic part of my trip. On the left is Karim Chabani, who read a paper about Fun Home called “Double Trajectories” at my thing in Paris last week. And in the pink sweater is Agnes Muller, who read a paper called “Image as Paratext.” It was very pleasant being psychoanalyzed by them.

That’s the back of Ghanima’s head, and her son Alain. And I’m on the right. Ghanima made a Moroccan dish called bastilla, and a flourless chocolate cake, both of which were divine.

I’m really sorry I stopped posting–things just got too crazy at the Angoulême festival to keep it up, and now that I’m home I’m swamped with work. I’ll try to catch up soon. I’ve only had time to skim the most recent comments here–I’m looking very forward to reading that article Maggie Jochild linked to, the one about author blogs. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my relationship with the blog, and wanting to figure it out.

DTWOF episode #503

January 31st, 2007

Sorry I disappeared. Here’s the next strip. Read the rest of this entry »

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.