{"id":1792,"date":"2009-09-12T10:32:13","date_gmt":"2009-09-12T14:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1792"},"modified":"2009-09-12T10:33:12","modified_gmt":"2009-09-12T14:33:12","slug":"weekend-o-book-festival-appearances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1792","title":{"rendered":"Weekend o&#8217; Book Festival Appearances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll be appearing at two book festivals this weekend.\u00a0 The first is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookmarksbookfestival.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bookmarks Book Festival<\/a> here in Winston-Salem on Saturday and the second will be at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncliteraryfestival.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">North Carolina Literary Festival<\/a> in Chapel Hill on Sunday.\u00a0 Here&#8217;re details:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Bookmarks<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/wp-content\/themes\/tropicala\/images\/bookmarks.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The New Frontier: Graphic Novels, Webcomics and Manga<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Saturday, 2:00 pm &#8211; at the DADA Center 526 N Liberty St.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 <em>New York Times Book Review<\/em>, have been chosen as a <em>TIME Magazine<\/em>&#8216;s best book of the year, and have even garnered <em>The Guardian<\/em>&#8216;s First Book Award.\u00a0 While traditional print newspapers struggle to remain afloat, webcomics&#8211;online comic strips and longer serialized online comics stories&#8211;are growing ever more popular, with 15,000 titles on the web and counting.\u00a0 Beginning in the mid &#8217;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.\u00a0 Join a panel of cartoonists, scholars and retailers for a discussion of the emerging presence of these three types of comics in today&#8217;s publishing environment.\u00a0 Guests include:<\/p>\n<p>A cartoonist and Retailer, <strong>Adam Casey<\/strong> has worked both for specialty comics shops and at general interest book stores.<br \/>\n<strong>Dr. Craig Fischer<\/strong> (panel moderator) is a noted comics scholar who&#8217;s written for critical publications such as <em>The Comics Journal<\/em> and teaches a Comics and Graphic Novels class at Appalachian State University.<br \/>\n<strong>Ben Towle<\/strong> is a cartoonist whose works include graphic novels and comics for various publishers such as SLG Publishing and Disney\/Hyperion.<br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\"><strong>Ursula Vernon<\/strong> is a prominent webcomics artist, known for her ongoing series <em>Digger<\/em> as well as the childrens&#8217; book <em>Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew<\/em>.<\/span><br \/>\n<strong>Dr. Mark I. West<\/strong> is a professor of English at UNCC whose recent book <em>The Japanification of Children&#8217;s Popular Culture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki<\/em> examines Japanese popular culture and its influence on youth culture in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>N.C. Literary Festival<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/wp-content\/themes\/tropicala\/images\/nclit.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Graphic Novels<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunday, 1:30 pm &#8211; at Manning Hall, UNC Chapel Hill campus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Harvey Award nominated artist <strong>Thomas Boatwright<\/strong> is co-creator of <em>Cemetery Blues<\/em> and the recently released <em>Zeke Deadwood: Zombie Lawman<\/em>. In addition to drawing various freelance illustrations he enjoys playing old roots and blues music on banjo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben Towle<\/strong> is an Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist whose most recent work was illustrating <em>Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean<\/em>, (written by novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor) a graphic novel for young adults forthcoming from Disney\/Hyperion Books.\u00a0 Other books by Towle include works\u00a0 from SLG Publishing, such as the recent historical fiction graphic novel, <em>Midnight Sun<\/em> and his earlier volume of comic folk tales, <em>Farewell, Georgia<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">Ursula Vernon has written and illustrated <em>Dragonbreath<\/em> and one other middle-grade novel: <em>Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew<\/em> (an Oprah\u2019s Book Club Kids Reading List selection) as well as the <em>Digger<\/em> series of graphic novels for adults. The daughter of an artist, she attempted to rebel and become a scientist, but in the end couldn\u2019t fight her destiny. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she writes, draws, and in her words, \u201ccreates weird thingies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll be appearing at two book festivals this weekend.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Here&#8217;re details: Bookmarks The New Frontier: Graphic Novels, Webcomics and Manga Saturday, 2:00 pm &#8211; at the DADA &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1792\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,45,13],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-sU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1792"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}