Blog

back to me

July 13th, 2006

I know Fun Home has gotten a lot of good reviews, but this article by Hillary Chute in the Village Voice is excellent. She really gets the book. A most gratifying sensation indeed.

overload

July 13th, 2006

I’ve been trying to post about the reading I did last night at a local independent bookstore, Bear Pond Books in Montpelier. But I’m feeling immobilized. Partly from all the email and snail mail and bills that have been piling up while I’ve been flying around the country. Partly by the news, which I’ve been too distracted to follow closely. Now the reports from Gaza and Mumbai are making posts about my book tour seem a little ridiculous. I know, you’re not checking in here for insights on the international situation. But I had to get that off my chest.

The Bear Pond reading was very pleasant. I love this bookstore. I even like their bunting.

sic transit

July 11th, 2006

The second, midwest leg of my book tour is over. Back to reality. No more adoring crowds or fancy hotels. Here’s a little movie on this theme I made this morning on the blue line out to O’Hare. Thus passes the glory of the world.

Women and Children First, Chicago

July 10th, 2006

I’m feeling sort of digitized as I shuttle about the country, like a piece of email that gets opened in Minneapolis, then forwarded to Milwaukee and then to Chicago. Or maybe it’s more that the real world is starting to feel virtual, and I have random access to it. Last night in Chicago, for example, I was startled to see all these people I know show up at my reading. I knew they all lived here, but I was still in virtual mode, and the actual, analog people came as a shock. I can’t quite explain it. It’s sort of like the last ten people you got emails from suddenly manifesting in your living room. There was Nicole Hollander, and Kris Dresen, and Anne Elizabeth Moore, and Carrie Barnett who used to run People Like Us, the erstwhile queer bookstore here, and a couple people introduced themselves as commenters on the blog.

Here’s everyone after the reading, waiting to get their books signed.

Here’s Kris Dresen and me. If you don’t know her work, go check out her site immediately. She draws incredibly beautiful comics.

After the reading, I went across the street for sushi with Nicole Hollander, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Cat from the bookstore, and Michelle who owns a nearby art gallery. Here’s me and the awesome Nicole Hollander.

Here’s Anne Elizabeth Moore, champion of cartoons everywhere and co-editor of Punk Planet.

Anne gave me a really nice intro before my reading, talking about the comics world vs. the lgbt literary world, and how my work has mostly been confined to the latter but now that’s changing. That’s a very bad paraphrase, but it’ll have to do for now. Anne is editing the Best American Comics series for Houghton Mifflin, and the first volume is coming out this fall.

Here’s Cat and Michelle. And here’s Nicole in Michele’s gallery, after dinner, with a paper dress sculpture she made.

Then Nicole drove me over to Riva Lehrer‘s place. Riva is an astounding portrait artist. Here she is with her latest project. And check out this portrait she did of my friend Eli Clare.

Okay. Jeez, this was an exhausting, link-filled post and I didn’t really explain everything properly. But now I have to run and catch my plane back to Vermont.

Masters of American Comics

July 10th, 2006

Thanks to Anna the sculptor in Madison who told me about the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I went to it yesterday morning. The hotel shuttle bus dropped me off in front of this cool orange sunburst sculpture.

Then I walked across a bridge to the art museum, which looks like some sort of infernal catapult about to launch a projectile across Lake Michigan.

The comics exhibit was amazing. The Winsor McKay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat) stuff in particular blew me away. It was stunning to see it in black and white, without the printed newspaper colors. Vigorous, free, confident, accurate. I got all excited by McKay’s masterful perspective and architectural renderings. (Some people I’ve talked to have objected to the “Masters” in the title, I guess on sexist grounds, and it’s true there’s not a woman in the whole exhibit, but McKay is a fucking master so I’ll let it go.) His pages were so vivid I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Little Nemo tumble right out onto the gallery floor.

Here I am waiting for the shuttle bus to pick me up and take me back to the hotel so Amy from Broad Vocabulary can drive me to Chicago.

Some local Vermont things…

July 9th, 2006

I’m going to be on VPR on Monday afternoon talking to Neal Charnoff about Fun Home. It’s tentatively scheduled for 4:50, on the local news programming they slot into All Things Considered. I’ll probably miss it. I’m flying back to VT from Chicago on Monday, and my flight theoretically gets in at 4:39. But it’ll be available for download, and I’ll post that here. Just in case you’re not sick to death of hearing about me and my book and my sordid family history yet.

And I’m going to read at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier on Tuesday the 11th at 7pm.

And also at the Peace and Justice Store in Burlington on Friday the 14th. Also at 7pm, I think.

Broad Vocabulary, Milwaukee WI

July 9th, 2006

Today I read at Broad Vocabulary, a new feminist bookstore that’s owned and run by a stalwart band of young volunteers. I love their mudflap logo. Here’s Molly out front.

And here’s me with Molly and Amy, inside.

We had a cozy, convivial sort of reading. Here’s the crowd looking at my powerpoint slides. It was a great bunch of young people, old time DTWOF readers, boys, girls, comics geeks, the whole gamut.

A Room of One’s Own, Madison, WI

July 8th, 2006

Yesterday Ann and I drove from Minneapolis to Madison. Here I am driving her Saturn crossing the hot, flat expanse of Wisconsin.

In Madison, I did a radio interview with Matt Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive. Then I raced over to A Room of One’s Own, the excellent feminist bookstore here, where a hot, throbbing crowd was waiting.

That woman front and center is Rachel, who wore her Mo shirt for the occasion. Someone counted about 130 people. It was an utterly delightful audience. One woman, likely an English professor, compared my writing style to Melville. And being the radical Madisonians that they are, there was some discussion about the ethics of doing readings in the bookstore chains–Bounders, and Bunns and Noodle.

Here are the intrepid booksellers who brought me here. Nancy on the left, (me), Sandi, Hilary, and Sashe.

After the reading I went over to Ann’s house, the woman who’s been driving me around on this junket. We had Chinese food with her girlfriend Michele and their exceedingly charming, talented, and rather adorable neighbors. Here’s Gwen, Anna, and Michele.

Here’s Rachel and Ann.

Gwen showed us photos of a crazy taxidermized rodent museum that she recently went to. I think you can see them too on her myspace page. Lemme tell you, Wisconsin is a happening place.

well slap my ass and call me judy

July 7th, 2006

Fun Home is on the NY Times Book Review bestseller list. They only list the top 15 in the magazine. But the “extended list” goes down to number 35. And Fun Home is number 30. The latest version isn’t up yet, but on last week’s it’s number 35. Ann Coulter, alas, tops the chart. But I’m stunned to be on there at all.

The Real Amazon

July 7th, 2006

Tonight I read at Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis, the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America. My publisher wasn’t planning to send me to the midwest on my book tour, but this group of four women’s bookstores got together and said they’d pay my airfare if I’d come to Minneapolis, Wisconsin, and Chicago. Isn’t that amazing? Here’s the jar Amazon put out tonight for donations.

It’s a remarkable grass-roots effort. Here I am in the car with Ann Seidl who picked me up at the airport. She’s a librarian and filmmaker, who totally volunteered to drive from Madison to Minneapolis and back again, ferrying me to my readings. She’s working on a wild documentary called The Hollywood Librarian.

The reading tonight was pretty great. I used to live in the Twin Cities, so there were a bunch of old friends in the audience. Plus I have a special fondness for Amazon because it was the inspiration for Madwimmin Books, the women’s bookstore in my comic strip. Here’s Barb Weiser, who’s worked at Amazon at least since I lived here in the late eighties. She’s my bookseller idol.

There was an overflow crowd–not everyone could fit into the space.

While I was signing books inside, Ann apparently amused herself by convincing people to pose with my book on the sidewalk. Aren’t they handsome, though?