The French edition of My Fairy Godfather is out in shops (in France) - it’s gorgeous! Thank you to Komics Initiative for once again doing a superb job.
Front cover
Back cover
Very cool alternative cover
News and updates
My Fairy Godfather Ulule campaign for French Edition
The good folks at Komics Initiative have just launched their Ulule campaign (ends August 5th) for the French edition of My Fairy Godfather, my latest collaboration with Robert Mailer Anderson, check it out if you want to get your hands on a (French) copy. The cool thing about Komics Initiative publications is that you can obtain a unique alternative cover (and poster) (and apparently for the right price a copy with a drawing in it [called a dédicace])that no other publisher is doing (!).
Kickstarter Campaign: How to Get Out of Detention: A Comic for Immigrant Detainees
If you know me, you know that I'm not a huge self promoter, or often ask for help for a potential project. However, a Kickstarter campaign launched yesterday in partnership with EachOther and BiD (Bail for Immigration Detainees) for what promises to be quite an amazing project - creating an accessible and illustrated version of BiD's guide, How to Get Out of Detention.
If we can get the funding, that is.... and it's all or nothing - if we don't meet the funding deadline in 30 days (Nov. 18th), the project doesn't happen 😭...
I’d be super grateful for any donations or promotion of this project on social media!
New Work Featured in Cypher Comics
After 6 years, my story about Maxima Acuña and other water defenders in Peru has finally been published in this month’s edition of Cypher Comics.
Paris Book Launch
Thank you to all the folks at Librairie Sanzot, Librairie Sans Titre, Le Grand Jeu, Landline and Ambassador Denise Bauer for hosting such great launch events for the French edition of Windows on the World.
French edition of Windows on the World
Komics Initiative have just published a stunning edition of Windows on the World in France, with two different covers, an interview with yours truly, and a cool bookmark. Je suis très impressionné, bravo!
New work featured in Cypher Comics
Really pleased to announce a story I made in partnership with Frontline Defenders and OTWatch about human rights defenders and environmental activists in Mongolia is featured in the latest edition of Cypher Comics. The other stories, from Zambia, Morocco and Turkey, are stunning.
Click here to download a pdf. More about Cypher Comics:
In July 2020, Front Line Defenders launched Cypher (@cypher_comics on Instagram), a digital comics magazine that advances the organization’s storytelling and narrative framing work in collaboration with and in support of HRDs. Working with artists from around the world, including the award-winning visual storyteller, Beldan Sezen, as creative director, the ’zine is a monthly publication featuring stories of HRDs, their work and the challenges they face.
If you are interested in an annual subscription to receive printed editions of Cypher, please email campaigns@frontlinedefenders.org, with 'Subscription' in the subject line, and you will be sent more information about options. We are close to finalizing printing arrangements and pricing options.
New year, new book....
New collaboration with writer Robert Mailer Anderson called My Fairy Godfather. Watch this space….
The UN Poverty Envoy's UK Visit, Two Years On
“Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Those were the characteristics the UN’s former poverty envoy, Philip Alston, warned would come to define the lives of Britain’s least well off people following his 2018 visit to the UK. Illustrations for new video from Each Other. Link to full article is here.
Inequality is a constant issue in the UK. It can affect your standard of living, cause racial discrimination, even impact on mental health. Through all of th...
LeVar Burton!
Gov. Roy Cooper!
Get your copy!
Virtual Book Launch July 28th at City Lights Books
Robert Mailer Anderson will be joined by Jacqueline Obradors, Jon Sack, with musical accompaniment by Jay Walsh (of Douglas Fir) celebrating the new graphic novel Windows on the World, co-authored with Zack Anderson, Illustrations by Jon Sack, published by Fantagraphics Books.
July 28th, 2020
6PM - 9PM PST
2AM - 5AM BST
Register here.
Announcing: Windows on the World
My collaboration with writers Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson is finally being published by Fantagraphics in June!
Out now in the US here. And in the UK here.
Publishers Weekly, starred review:
“This heart-wrenching 9/11 drama draws back the curtains on American myths, revealing a global and complicated world. Fernando is a college dropout working as a bellhop and reading Don Quixote in his native Mazatlan, Mexico, when the Twin Towers fall. His father, Balthazar, works as a dishwasher in the Windows on the World restaurant and sends money home to his family. Fernando’s mother spots Balthazar in a news clip of people fleeing the wreckage and soon Fernando is making his way to New York City. At a 9/11 rescue center, he’s told that “if [your father] didn’t officially work in the Towers, he can’t officially be missing.” From Downtown to Spanish Harlem, Fernando navigates a minefield of racism in the grieving city—and finds romance or something adjacent along the way. Joining a crew of Nigerian window washers, Fernando gains more insight into inequities with each swipe of his squeegee. Though he begins to mourn his father, he later discovers his disappearance is due to a smaller, domestic tragedy. The art is bold, cinematic, and deeply shadowed, and the unexpected ending is a product of cynical wisdom from looking back at the two decades since the event, and stronger for it. This is a resonant tale for troubling times. “
Windows on the World
Set in a New York City in mourning, this poignant graphic novel explores the push-and-pull between love and obligation.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, an undocumented worker named Balthazar busses tables at New York City’s famous Windows on the World restaurant. Back in Mexico, his family watches their TV screen in horror as the Twin Towers collapse. Refusing to give up hope that Balthazar is alive, his son Fernando embarks on a treacherous journey across the border to New York to find him. Along the way, Fernando learns what it means to be undocumented in America — encountering at turns an indifferent bureaucracy and a supportive group of fellow immigrants who help guide him through his quixotic mission to bring his family back together.
Now a major motion picture! Here’s the trailer:
Borderlands and peacebuilding: a view from the margins
Just launched yesterday is the new publication from Conciliation Resources, “Borderlands and peacebuilding: a view from the margins”. Included are seven maps I made to accompany case studies on peacebuilding in seven border areas around the world. From C-R’s website:
“This fourth Accord Insight publication looks at peacebuilding in borderland regions and how peace and transition processes address the interests of borderland communities. The publication looks at seven case studies of peacebuilding in borderlands: Bab al-Hawa, Idlib on the Syria-Turkey border; north-eastern Kenya, bordering Somalia and Ethiopia; the Medenine and Tataouine governorates of Tunisia; Northern Ireland; the Donbas region of Ukraine which borders Russia; the Tarai region of Nepal on the border with India; and Shan and Kachin states in Myanmar, bordering China. These show how transition processes look very different when viewed from the margins of states and provide important lessons for peacebuilding policy and practice.”
Fighting SUS Publication
SO happy to have been a part of this project!
“In England and Wales, the ‘sus law’ became the informal name for section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 which permitted a police officer to stop and potentially convict individuals as ‘suspected persons.’ Section 4 was repealed in 1981 following uprisings in Brixton.”
Why was a Victorian vagrancy act, intended to prevent ‘begging, showing wounds’ and ‘telling fortunes’, used to criminalise minority groups in the 1970s and 1980s? Who brought a stop to it? Who is under suspicion today?
Fighting SUS is a youth-led oral history project which has investigated the near 200 year history of this law and its legacy in Britain today through oral histories with individuals affected by the sus law as well as evidence in archives such as the Bishopsgate Institute, National Archive and George Padmore Institute.”
For full list of stories, please see Short Stories section.
La Lucha Book Tour 2018 - Italy and Spain
La Lucha is now available in Italy and Spain, and there are many launches happening in both countries this month. Below are launch events occurring in Italy, featuring Ruth Fierro, the director of the Centro de los Derechos Humanos de las Mujeres in Chihuahua, Mexico. Here's the link to purchase a copy in Italian, and here's a link to purchase the book in Spain. Launch event details in Spain to be confirmed soon, but will be happening 19 - 22 of March, including a presentation to the Spanish Parliament on March 20th.
ITALY
7 - 17 MARCH
7 March, 17.00
Mondadori Bookstore
Corso Mazzini 156
Cosenza
With Nate a Sud and Centro Women's Studies Milly Villa
8 March, 18.00
Mondadori Point
Corso Roma 63
Paola
With Nate a Sud and Centro Women's Studies Milly Villa
12 March, 18.30
Casa delle Donne
via Marsala 8, Milano
With journalists Cynthia Rodriguez and Laura Filios
13 March, 18.00
Librati - Libreria delle Donne
via San Gregorio Barbarigo 91, Padova
14 March, 18.00
Libreria Coop Zanichelli
Piazza Galvani 1/H, Bologna
With LGBT activist and human rights lawyer Cathy La Torre
15 March, 18.30
Libreria Feltrinelli
Corso Vannucci 78, Perugia
With Liberamente Donna and Non Una Di Meno - Perugia
16 March, 18.00
Festa dei Libri e della Lettura - Libri Come
Auditorium Parco della Musica, Roma
16 March, 21.00
Lucha y Siesta - 10 anni di Desideri e Rivoluzione
Angelo Mai, Roma
If We All Spat At Once They'd Drown
Illustration for the upcoming anthology on class, "If We All Spat At Once They'd Drown". More details soon.
Sneak Peek. . .
. . . of a page from the project I'm currently working on, to be published hopefully before I die.
Below the Ten
Three new pieces for KCRW's series Below the Ten, about life in South LA, by journalist and radio producer David Weinberg.
The three particular stories I illustrated are a part of a series called Peacemakers, about gangs and gang intervention, from the perspectives of a former LAPD officer, a former gang member, and an activist.