Josh Neufeld, comix artist extraordinaire, will be talking about the graphic memoir tonight at Warning: Graphic Content. I’m psyched I get to meet the author of A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge. I read the book prepping for tonight and fell in love with the real-life stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors. In 2008 I visited NOLA and was shocked at both how much the city was thriving but how much work still needed to be accomplished post-Katrina. To visit New Orleans is to love New Orleans and I’ve felt a kinship and empathy towards the city ever since.


Here are the things I might talk to Josh about tonight, if I get the chance.


1) His upcoming collaboration with NPR’s “On the Media” co-host Brooke Gladstone. (Their book is tentatively titled The Influencing Machine and it’ll be a comic book about the media.)
2) His trip down to Philly from Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
3) If he’s still in touch with the people featured in A.D. and what they are up to now.
4) How he thinks the situation in New Orleans has improved since the storm and flooding.
5) Did he feel totally cool when MTV’s “Splash Page” blog called A.D. the best nonfiction comic of 2009?


Ok, maybe I’ll save face and refrain from asking him that last one.


Meet Josh, Jamar and Daniel tonight and ask them your own questions at BMFI.


-Karina Kacala

In anticipation of tomorrow’s Salon on graphic nonfiction, I asked around the FPA office to see which graphic nonfiction works are most popular. I discovered that Alison Bechdel could start a fan club amongst our staff and even Kanye West has gotten into the graphic memoir field.

Vicki Solot, Artistic Director… Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

Tiffany Thwaites, Marketing Intern… Through the Wire (illustrations by Bill Plympton based on the music and lyrics of Kanye West)

Sarah Crawford, Intern to the Artistic Director… Craig Thompson’s Blankets

Dan Gasiewski, Managing Director… Stitches by David Small tied with Bechdel’s Fun Home

Nick Forrest, Administrative Coordinator… Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, with a caveat, “Although neither a memoir, nor nonfiction, per se, this graphic novel does an incredible job of capturing the feeling and politics of a particular time and place in history through small, personal stories that speak to much greater truths.”






As for me, my first foray into graphic nonfiction was Maus, so that will always hold a special place in my library. But I do think that Fun Home is my favorite. Bechdel created such sad intimacy in her work about her dysfunctional childhood; I can’t imagine reading it and not being affected.


Share YOUR favorite graphic nonfiction books in the comments section!


-Karina Kacala