Author: ellen

Words in Boxes

Maré, one of my Graphic Novels Lit students, just told me about a comics challenge circulating online: create a pictureless comic, 4 – 40 panels. My first response was something like, “oh, pictureless comic, whatever,” and “panels aren’t pictures?” but then I had an idea and scribbled it on the wipe-off board. Here it is, after a short discussion with a few other students about whether late June counts as spring or summer. (“Summer sounds more robust, anyway,” said Amanda, and so that stood.)

WeFellInLoveLastSummer_LoRez

Bookfest Panel This Saturday

This Saturday at Columbia City’s weekend-long Bookfest, I’ll be in a “Contemporary Graphic Novels” panel with Gary Groth of Fantagraphics, Leigh Walton of Top Shelf, and cartoonist Megan Kelso, 3 – 4pm. (“Contemporary graphic novels” as opposed to… olde tyme graphic novels?)

More info about the fest:

S E A T T L E B O O K F E S T
Columbia City : October 24-25, 2009

Seattle Bookfest features more than 100 local authors, including poets and writers of fiction, nonfiction, mystery, romance, fantasy, and children’s books. In addition, the fair showcases over 50 area bookstores, nonprofits, and small but influential publishers as exhibitors. Check out our long list of panels, workshops and special events including a spelling bee, SCRABBLE contests, bookbinding demo, and a How-to-Write-a-Novel-in-a-Month workshop.

I Am an Antiheroine!

Writer Jami Attenberg interviewed me for her “Antiheroines” column in literature and music blog, Large-Hearted Boy. Her intro:

The first time I met Ellen Forney was on a slightly sweaty summer’s night at a bar in New York City in Hell’s Kitchen, out back, on a patio crowded with a mix of lit kids and post-corporate-jobbers. She was visiting town from Seattle to do a reading, and knew one of the writers there. I thought she was young, just a kid, with her punky, spiky haircut, and her enormous eyes, and her light giggle. (Of course she’s around my age, which is not to say we are old. But. You know.) She held a copy of her juicy collection, I Love Led Zeppelin, in her lap, and when I looked at the cover, which was a self-portrait of her in a tight shirt, short skirt, torn fishnets, and big, bad-ass boots, leaning against a classic old car with authority, I thought: GIVE ME THAT BOOK NOW. She is the same as her work, which is to say she makes you want to know her immediately, and also that she is immediately knowable. She’s got a refreshing transparency about herself. She is deep, but she is flawed. She is funny and wild, but is also very much a grown-up. She is extremely interested in discussing sexuality, but knows when to protect herself. This mixture of openness and strength makes her work, including Lust: Kinky Online Personal Ads (a collection of her illustrations of personal ads for The Stranger) and the National Book Award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, extremely powerful and relatable, and probably very necessary for your bookshelf.

She asks me about how physical exercise affects my work (I’ve never been asked that before!), if I do actually learn from my students (yes), my dating habits (the answer was “not really”), and a bunch of music questions (what do I listen to when I work? –Uh… usually nothing? Maybe NPR really low? Does white noise count?). Full interview here. Thanks, Jami!

Picture 2

Me ‘n’ Jami in Seattle

The UW guy who orders books calls me “Professor Forney,” which I just love

I’ve been doing a lot of teaching since my last post eons ago. I’ll be teaching a Graphic Novels Lit class at Cornish College of the Arts next semester, and am TOTALLY excited about that. (FYI: community members can take classes at Cornish, too – you don’t have to be a Cornish student.)

In the past few months I’ve also taught and given talks at at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, West Auburn High School, Whatcom County Library, Teen Advisory Group at the Seattle Art Museum, 826 Seattle, and Shoreline Library. I think teaching helps me a lot with my public speaking – especially since I get really clumsy in my gesticulating enthusiasm when I’m teaching. I haven’t yet split my head open (knock wood) but definitely have figured out how to recover from a stumble and keep talking. I can also say, “Interesting question! You know, I really don’t know,” and not feel like an idiot. I love teaching – it’s become a major part of what I do as a comics professional.

My Advanced Comics class at Cornish last semester was just dreamy – they worked really hard and the comics they came up with were fantastic. Here’s a class picture (we really wished we had one of those placards like in kindergarten photos), posing with their final projects, minicomics of all the work they’d done during the semester:

I also told them to make faces – I always think those photos come out best!

Blitz Is This Thursday OHMYGOD!

I tend to tell my friends about this event in one big blurt:

“Did I tell you I’m on the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce now? Yes, and I’m the co-chair of the Arts and Entertainment Committee, and we took on the Capitol Hill art walk as our signature project. So now it’s every second Thursday, visual art and literary arts and music and performing arts, and for the launch on June 11 there’ll be an Art-on-a-Stick Parade and some street performers and at least one after-party. It’ll be fun, here’s a postcard, you should come!”

More information and a map (more than 40 participants!): www.blitzcapitolhill.com

Last-Minute Art Show: Thursday Night at Cafe Racer!

I’m not sure why but Cafe Racer was suddenly left without an art show for this next month. So Friends of the Nib came up with this brilliant last-minute idea: everyone in the group would bring in five to fifteen of our drawings on paper, any medium, to be hung chockablock all over the walls with pushpins, priced to “fly into your arms” (less than $50).

I’ve been going through my sketchbooks and folders for odd illustrations and drafts, and have a little stack to take to Racer tomorrow.

You should come!