Photo of Politics and Prose’s “Growing Up With Graphics” panel by comicsgirlIf you’ve been in graphic novel withdrawal since April, hold tight! Politics and Prose has announced a five-part graphic novel lineup starting this week that will run through the beginning of November. The schedule includes:
>> Thursday, September 12: Jeff Smith speaks at 7 p.m. at the Wilson High School Auditorium. This New York Times-bestselling graphic novelist created RASL, a sci-fi noir series about an art thief who jumps between parallel worlds in order to steal paintings, all the while being chased by government agents. RASL is the darker follow-up to Smith’s lighthearted Bone series and is recommended for ages 15 and up.
>> Monday, September 16: Laura Lee Gulledge (Will & Whit), Rutu Modan (Maya Makes a Mess), Matt Phelan (The Storm in the Barn), and Gene Yang (Boxers & Saints) will join a panel moderated by Glen Weldon of NPR at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m. “The Art and Style of Graphic Novels” panelists will draw freestyle from “concept cards” picked out of a box.
>> Tuesday, September 17: Gene Yang will appear solo at 7 p.m. at Cleveland Park Library. The National Book Award finalist wrote and illustrated Boxers & Saints, which tells the concurrent stories of a Chinese villager and a missionary living through the 1898 Boxer Rebellion. The novel is recommended for ages 15 and up.
>> Thursday, October 10: Paul Pope will be at Takoma Park Library at 7:30 p.m. His adventure comic book Battling Boy is about a young demigod sent to save the city of Arcopolis from monsters. Pope is known for his “genre-bending storytelling” and he has won three Eisner Awards for his work (like the Oscars of the comic industry).
>> Thursday, November 7: Gareth Hinds comes to Takoma Park Library at 7:30 p.m. to discuss his comic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Hinds is also the graphic novelist behind The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Merchant of Venice, and King Lear. He is excited to share “some of the most brilliant rhymed verse ever written” with today’s budding bards, and says he especially enjoyed drawing the sword fights.
The first week of graphic novel events coincides with the 2013 Small Press Expo, “North America’s Premiere Independent Cartooning and Comic Arts Festival,” held in Bethesda, Md. One of the guest speakers this year will be Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), who just released his first graphic novel about the 1963 March On Washington. March was co-written with Andrew Aydin and drawn by Nate Powell.
After Politics and Prose’s successful April panel, “Growing Up With Graphics”, Kerri Poore of the bookstore’s children and teen department was encouraged to hold more graphic novel events for comic lovers of all ages. She tells DCist she was pleasantly surprised by the number and variety of local fans, coming together to hear panelists bounce off opinions and ideas.
All events in the graphic novel series are free, and novelists will be signing (and probably doodling in) their books for attendees.
