Poets & Writers Theater

In this New York Public Library event, comic book writers and artists Amy Chu, Arielle Jovellanos, Soo Lee, and Amy Reeder talk about character development and the diverse and influential roles women play in shaping the world of comics at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York.

Watch the trailer for American Born Chinese, a Disney Plus series based on the 2006 award-winning graphic novel of the same name by Gene Luen Yang, starring Jimmy Liu, Ke Huy Quan, Ben Wang, Daniel Wu, and Michelle Yeoh.

This Librairie Drawn & Quarterly virtual event celebrates the book launch of Lee Lai’s debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit (Fantagraphics, 2021), as the author speaks with Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch about editing, writing vignettes, and gay characters. Lai is featured in “First Fiction 2021” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“The book mixes elements of their real life and how and why they came to create these worlds, but also mixes up my imaginings of what their world would have been like.” Isabel Greenberg talks about the process of writing and illustrating her graphic novel Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës (Abrams ComicArts, 2020), which incorporates stories written by Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë during their childhood about an imaginary world.

The Kitchen is a film adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novel of the same name written by Ollie Masters and illustrated by Ming Doyle. Directed by Andrea Berloff and starring Tiffany Haddish, Melissa McCarthy, and Elisabeth Moss, the film set in the 1970s follows three women in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen who take over organized crime operations after their husbands are sent to prison.

Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel Wilson (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010) has been adapted into a feature film starring Isabella Amara, Laura Dern, and Woody Harrelson. Directed by Craig Johnson, the film follows the comedic story of a lonely middle-aged man who reconnects with his estranged wife to search for their daughter who was given up for adoption.

"I'm telling the story of my family and my life...just telling the point of view of children in a small village near Homs, and I like the reader to make his own judgment on everything." Syrian-French cartoonist and director Riad Sattouf talks about his book The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978–1984: A Graphic Memoir (Metropolitan Books, 2015), translated from the French by Sam Taylor, which won the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for graphic novel/comics.

The cartoonist and author of the graphic novel Building Stories speaks with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm.

The trailer for Are You My Mother? offers a glimpse into Alison Bechdel's fascinating "metabook," published this month by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in which she investigates her mother's life in search of clues about the mother-daughter gulf. For a closer look, check out this issue's installment of The Written Image.