After an intense, three-week marathon editing session in May, I finally finished my book, Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. The files are off to Penn State Press and in a few weeks I hope to receive copy edits and a new cover design. Then we’ll approve galleys in October for a March release. Here’s an image from the last day of production.
It’s kind of strange to go from having so much focus on one project for nearly fifteen years to not having anything to do for that project for a while. But I’m adjusting. And trying to catch up on other projects that have been on hold. And life.
Our 7th International Comics & Medicine conference in Dundee, Scotland was a huge success. On site organizer Andrew Godfrey did an amazing job of keeping all the many moving pieces in perfect place and all had an amazing time. A true highlight for me was introducing and spending some time with my comics idol, Lynda Barry.
Later this week I’m off to my very first San Diego Comic-Con! The Graphic Medicine Manifesto has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the Scholarly/Academic category. Win or lose, it is very exciting to be in the company of these fantastic fellow nominees:
- The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art, edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings (Rutgers)
- Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, edited by Mark McLelland et al. (University Press of Mississippi)
- Graphic Medicine Manifesto, by MK Czerwiec et al. (Penn State University Press)
- Superheroes on World Screens, edited by Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward (University Press of Mississippi)
- Unflattening, by Nick Sousanis (Harvard University Press)
And finally, in addition to teaching my seminar “Drawing Medicine” at Northwestern again this year, fall travel is shaping up to include a trip to Brown University in Rhode Island, a keynote at the Patho/Graphics workshop in Berlin, and a possible trip back to the UK for World AIDS Day. Lots of exciting Graphic Medicine work ahead!