This year’s Brooklyn Book Festival is fast approaching – Festival Day is Sunday September 22nd from 10am-6pm – and Forbidden Planet NYC will once again be the official bookseller for this year’s comics programming.
If you’re not familiar with the Festival it’s an annual celebration of books and the literary world held in downtown Brooklyn, featuring themed readings, panel discussions, vendors, and author signings.
Forbidden Planet’s been exhibiting at the show since its inception in 2006 and we’re happy to say we’ll be at this year’s event too. The panel descriptions below constitute the scheduled comics programming. The books we’ll be bringing represent a diverse collection of subjects and styles, their authors some of the bigger names in our field. Each panel will take place at the Brooklyn Historical Society (128 Pierrepont Street) and will be followed by author signings at our booth (except where annotated with * next to the title – those creators will sign at the Drawn & Quarterly booth).
BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY GREAT HALL
3:00 pm – We Need to Talk
The age of division has reawakened the art of conversation. Which doesn’t make it any easier! In three breathtakingly honest new graphic memoirs, Erin Williams (Commute), Mira Jacob (Good Talk), and Ebony Flowers (Hot Comb)* draw—literally—on the experience of pushing themselves and others to speak truth to race, gender, and class privilege in everyday life.
5:00 pm – YA on Fire: A Teen Comics Showcase
What makes a book “YAlit”? Leave that thorny cataloguing question to libraries — from the readers’ perspective, these new graphic novels are just plain lit, whether you’re a teen or still reading YA, while (supposedly) adulting. Stories of friendship, fantasy, adventure, romance, and the other-wordly all come together in new books by Mari Naomi (Life on Earth), Melanie Gillman (Stage Dreams), Magdalene Visaggio (Morning in America), and Dylan Meconis (Queen of the Sea). Moderated by Jerry Craft (New Kid)
BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY (128 Pierrepont Street)
12:00 pm – Everything is Horrible:
Comics as Satire and Witness* A psychedelic chronicle of 1970s New York paves the road for even trippier Washington D.C. satire; a meditation on casual bigotry feeds a gentrification horror story; and a daily conversation in an African hotel blossoms into the epic survival story of one of Guantanamo Bay’s youngest detainees. Ben Passmore (BTTM FDRS), Jérôme Tubiana (Guántanamo Kid), and Mark Alan Stamaty (MacDoodle Street) discuss the art of stepping outside reality in order to depict it. Moderated by Sarah Glidden (Rolling Blackouts)*.
3:00 PM – The Living City: Graphic Narratives on Place, People, and Soundtracks
In these graphic works, cities are a character, as much as the vivid lives they hold. Join a discussion between Summer Pierre, 2019 Eisner-Award nominee for All the Sad Songs, her memoir and travelogue drawn with a unique soundtrack; Ted Fox, whose classic Showtime at the Apollo is now a graphic tribute drawn by James Otis Smith; and Frank Santoro, who in Pittsburgh charts the unraveling and attempts at reconstruction of both his family and their city. Moderated by Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly.
4:00 pm – Feed Your Head
When life is messy and makes no sense going forwards or backwards in time, why be tidy about how we cope? David Heatley (Qualification), Kevin Huizenga (The River at Night)*, Kelsey Wroten (Cannonball), are here to channel the forces of personal chaos with stories of 12-step program binging, art school meltdown, and existential insomnia.
In other exciting news, we’ll also be the official exhibitor for Marvel Comics (you may have heard of them) in their first appearance at the show. That booth, #608, will be located just off Joralemon St. across from Brooklyn Borough Hall. The highlight of our day there? An in-booth signing with writers Charles Soule and Matthew Rosenberg from 2-3pm! Details about this booth and what we’ll be selling are available in another post.
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