I’ll be appearing at two book festivals this weekend.  The first is the Bookmarks Book Festival here in Winston-Salem on Saturday and the second will be at the North Carolina Literary Festival in Chapel Hill on Sunday.  Here’re details:

Bookmarks

The New Frontier: Graphic Novels, Webcomics and Manga

Saturday, 2:00 pm – at the DADA Center 526 N Liberty St.

Comics, narrative combinations of words and pictures, have existed for well over a century, but only recently have they become a formidable presence in mainstream book publishing. Graphic novels (long-form comics narratives) are now reviewed alongside prose works in periodicals like the New York Times Book Review, have been chosen as a TIME Magazine‘s best book of the year, and have even garnered The Guardian‘s First Book Award.  While traditional print newspapers struggle to remain afloat, webcomics–online comic strips and longer serialized online comics stories–are growing ever more popular, with 15,000 titles on the web and counting.  Beginning in the mid ’90s, Manga (Japanese comics) has become a major force in youth culture in the U.S., and with its success has come an increasing diversity of titles and genres of Manga translated and sold in the domestic market.  Join a panel of cartoonists, scholars and retailers for a discussion of the emerging presence of these three types of comics in today’s publishing environment.  Guests include:

A cartoonist and Retailer, Adam Casey has worked both for specialty comics shops and at general interest book stores.
Dr. Craig Fischer (panel moderator) is a noted comics scholar who’s written for critical publications such as The Comics Journal and teaches a Comics and Graphic Novels class at Appalachian State University.
Ben Towle is a cartoonist whose works include graphic novels and comics for various publishers such as SLG Publishing and Disney/Hyperion.
Ursula Vernon is a prominent webcomics artist, known for her ongoing series Digger as well as the childrens’ book Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew.
Dr. Mark I. West is a professor of English at UNCC whose recent book The Japanification of Children’s Popular Culture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki examines Japanese popular culture and its influence on youth culture in the U.S.

N.C. Literary Festival

Graphic Novels

Sunday, 1:30 pm – at Manning Hall, UNC Chapel Hill campus

Harvey Award nominated artist Thomas Boatwright is co-creator of Cemetery Blues and the recently released Zeke Deadwood: Zombie Lawman. In addition to drawing various freelance illustrations he enjoys playing old roots and blues music on banjo.

Ben Towle is an Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist whose most recent work was illustrating Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean, (written by novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor) a graphic novel for young adults forthcoming from Disney/Hyperion Books.  Other books by Towle include works  from SLG Publishing, such as the recent historical fiction graphic novel, Midnight Sun and his earlier volume of comic folk tales, Farewell, Georgia.

Ursula Vernon has written and illustrated Dragonbreath and one other middle-grade novel: Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew (an Oprah’s Book Club Kids Reading List selection) as well as the Digger series of graphic novels for adults. The daughter of an artist, she attempted to rebel and become a scientist, but in the end couldn’t fight her destiny. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she writes, draws, and in her words, “creates weird thingies.”