>> Hot off the press <<
I GOT A BOOK DEAL WITH SCRIBE PUBLICATIONS
The 200 page graphic novel will come out in mid-2024,
and I'm pleased as punch!
For those of you who've read Swallows Part One you'll be pleased to hear that, although the title doesn't reflect it, this is effectively the second part in the series.
When I began writing Swallows Part One as far back as 2013 I imagined it being a series of projects through which I could have a long-term conversation with readers about migration and identity. It was back then that I wrote the earliest fragments of what I had imagined would be called Swallows Part Two.
Cut to 2018 and I travelled with my parents Tony and Beverley to the Aeolian Islands where I hoped to do some research for the book, island hopping across the Italian archipelago. I wanted to look into why my ancestors left the islands in search of a new life. Exploring this might give me a larger sense of why anyone migrates. I'd been to these islands once before, a decade earlier, but I'd never been there in Summer ... my goodness, what an amazing holiday that was. I got plenty of raw material to work with and did a lot of sketching whilst I was there.
A year later in 2019 I took a draft of this book to the third Comic Art Workshop residency in the Hawkesbury River and got some (pretty positive) feedback from my gang of graphic novelists which spurred me on.
Below is a photo of me at the Moonah Art Centre in late 2020 after I'd finished inking the book.
During Covid lockdowns I managed to ink the entire book and then I finished digitally colouring the book in early 2022. I sent it to a few publishers, some of whom even wrote back to me saying some nice things about it but none of whom thought they could publish it until Scribe contacted me asking to publish it. I was super pleased with this, they're a book publisher bringing graphic novels into their list, having published Sam Wallman, Tommi Parrish, as well as graphic novel by Luke & Kelly Jackson with Mara White. Some of you know about my ongoing rants about how comics are excluded from literary spaces, so you can imagine how stoked I am to have a publisher who's addressing this issue.
Scribe also publish some of my favourite non-comics writers like Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Kim Mahood and Laura Jean Mackay.
In literary magazine news
The Nanna Project continues, in which I have been curating an 8 page comics for each issue of Island magazine. The most recent issue has a majestic piece by Leonie Brialey in it. I have long admired Leonie's work and it feels pretty satisfying to give her free rein across 8 pages.
I'm super stoked to publish a 6 page comic in the most recent issue of The Suburban Review and a 7 page comic in Rat World over in Aotearoa this month. If you want to support literary magazines that support comics - then subscribe to those fine magazines.
Below is a photo (by Adelaide Reisz) of me at the Island magazine launch yabbering on about comics in literary spaces (as per usual).
Thanks for reading this far down.
I'm impressed!!
May 11 is TEN YEARS TO THE DAY since we (myself and Craig San Roque) launched The Long Weekend in Alice Springs up in Mparntwe at Watch This Space gallery. I'm unable to get up there to put on an event to mark the occasion, so I decided to organise one down in nipaluna / Hobart. We're combining my two favourite things ->> BANDS and COMICS. Come along to Graphical Storytimes at Simple Cider, (FACEBOOK EVENT). See the poster below for details.
I've also started a new band with Michael Schlitz ... we couldn't come up with a good name in time so we're playing as the Shit Slippers for one night only.
