Off to TCAF! Panels on Travel, Memoir, and Sex

TCAF 2015 poster by Charles Burns

This weekend is the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, or TCAF, the reason I keep my passport current. It’s a wonderful show, free to everyone, held at the Toronto Reference Library, and with substantial content and attendees.

I’m honored this year to be moderating three panels, all on topics I find fascinating in comics. Here’s my schedule, but visit the programming list to see the many more choices available as well.

Art of the Travelogue, Saturday, 12:15pm, Marriott Bloor-Yorkville Hotel

The comics form lends itself beautifully to carnets de voyage, documents of trips, times, and places. Meet five of the foremost authors working in this genre, covering important, unexpected, and incredible trips, in comics. Featuring Lucy Knisley (Displacement), Boulet (Notes), Abby Denson (Cool Japan Guide), Kate Lavut (CHiCO), Kate Beaton (Hark, A Vagrant!), and Oliver East (Trains Are… Mint).

TCAF 2015 poster by Charles Burns

Truth & Intimacy in Graphic Memoir, Sunday, 11:15am, Marriott Bloor-Yorkville Hotel

Autobiography and memoir are among the most popular genres of contemporary comics, and with good reason: the successful comics memoir renders its subjects explicitly, both textually and visually. In this medium where so little is left to the imagination, real experience may never have been so intimate, so “true.” In this feature presentation, moderator Johanna Draper Carlson (Comics Worth Reading) will interview four of the most acclaimed practitioners of contemporary comics memoir, to get at the root of what it’s like to put it all on the page. Featuring Dustin Harbin (Diary Comics), Étienne Davodeau (The Initiates), John Porcellino (King Cat), and Raina Telgemeier (Sisters).

Sex, Sluts, And Stigma, Sunday, 2:45pm, The Pilot

Some cartoonists get down and dirty in their comics, telling autobiographical or reality-informed stories of their sexual adventures. How do friends and family react to their work, and how do they deal with the stigma of being smutty, slutty, or sex-positive? Featuring Anna Bongiovanni (Bikes, Babes, Booze, Blackouts, Binges, and Bad Ideas), Jess Fink (Chester 5000), Erik Kostiuk-Williams (Hungry Bottom Comics), Gisèle Lagacé (Pixie Trix), and Steve MacIsaac (Shirtlifter).



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