Stories tagged Iron Circus

Lucy Knisley ′09 and Melanie Gillman ′12 at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival

Brooklyn Book Festival Logo

Lucy Knisley ′09 (Kid Gloves, First Second, 2019) and Melanie Gillman ′12 (As the Crow Flies, Iron Circus, 2017) are authors at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, September 16-23.

The Brooklyn Book Festival features free and low-cost programs celebrating reading, authors, discussion, and published literature. As New York City’s largest free literary festival, the show presents programs that are hip, smart, diverse, and inclusive. The festival presents challenging, engaging, and thoughtful programming in the areas of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, youth, and children literature. Other cartoonists you can find at this year’s show include Kevin Huizenga (The River at Night, Drawn and Quarterly, 2019), MariNaomi (Gravity’s Pull, Graphic Universe, 2019), Dylan Meconis (Queen of the Sea, Candlewick, 2019), and Ben Passmore (Your Black Friend and Other Strangers, Silver Sproket, 2016).

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Next Up Visiting Artist: Melanie Gillman ′12

Melanie Gillman ′12 is an instructor and graphic novelist who specializes in LGBTQ books for kids and teens. They’re the creator of the webcomic and graphic novel As the Crow Flies, which has won multiple awards, including being named a 2018 Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association. They have also worked on several licensed kids comics titles in the past, including Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Care Bears. Melanie is a member of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Melanie’s newest graphic novel, a lesbian western romance titled Stage Dreams, will be published by Lerner/Graphic Universe in Fall 2019.

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As The Crow Flies is on ALA-curated list of recommended feminist lit for young readers

Congratulations to Melanie Gillman ′13 yet again! The first volume of As the Crow Flies (Iron Circus, 2017) appears on the 2019 Amelia Bloomer list for Young Adult Fiction. The Amelia Bloomer list is an ALA-curated list of recommended feminist lit for young readers.

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Alum Spotlight: Melanie Gillman’s ALA Stonewall Award

Melanie Gillman with their Stonewall Book Award

The first volume of Melanie Gillman’s As the Crow Flies (Iron Circus) recently won the Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association (ALA). The comic, originally published online where it is still updating, is about Charlie Lamonte, a thirtee-year-old, queer, black girl spending a week of summer vacation at an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp where they learn to question the rhetoric. Melanie ′12 gave a speech at the ALA Annual Conference and Exhibition upon receiving the award in New Orleans. You can view their heartfelt speech on Twitter. They discuss how important comics in particular are in sharing experiences:

Drawings are still, even in our advanced stage of technology, the most direct way that we have as human beings to be able to see visually through another human being’s eyes.

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ALUM MELANIE GILLMAN’S “AS THE CROW FLIES” RECEIVES ALA STONEWALL HONOR

Starred reviews, awards, and accolades for As the Crow Flies

The first print volume of As the Crow Flies, by Melanie Gillman ’12, was released by Iron Circus Comics in November 2017. Since it’s release, it has received three starred reviews and numerous awards and reviews! The comic, originally published online where it is still updating, is about Charlie Lamonte, a thirtee-year-old, queer, black girl spending a week of summer vacation at an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp where she learns to question the rhetoric. This volume is 250 pages and $30. They started posting the web comic in January, 2012.

Stonewall Honor named “As the Crow Flies,” written and illustrated by The Center for Cartoon Studies alum Melanie Gillman ′12 and published by Iron Circus Comics. Congratulations to Melanie and Iron Circus!

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Summer Workshop: Graphic Memoir

Page 3 from As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman

June 26-30 

Eventbrite - The Center for Cartoon Studies Summer Workshops

Memoir is a popular subject in comics and Melanie Gillman ’12 is here to help you work on your own graphic memoir.

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Alum Spotlight: Melanie Gillman, award superstar

As The Crow Flies

Melanie Gillman ′14 is sweeping the awards this year. With more awards to come, they have already won four awards. As the Crow Flies (Iron Circus Comics) was recently collected into volume 1 from the web comic and is rocking it through the awards already:

Melanie won a DINK Award, Best Minicomic, for Pockets, which is a short set in the As the Crow Flies universe

Congratulations, Melanie! We’ll look for more awards to come before the end of the year!

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As the Crow Flies on Kickstarter

As the Crow Flies on Kickstarter

As the Crow Flies, a webcomic by Melanie Gillman, is finally making it to print through Iron Circus with a Kickstarter. The comic is about a queer, black teen girl at an all-white Christian summer camp, Charlie struggles to reconcile the piousness of the camp with the disregard it has for outsiders like herself and her fellow camper Sydney.

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Next Up Visiting Artist: Spike Trotman

templar-arizona-book-four-trouble-every-day

Spike Trotman was born on November 18, 1978, which is, as she has pointed out before, the very same day cult leader Jim Jones poisoned 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana. She has been boldly challenging conventions since then and has gone from being a feisty Maryland Calvin and Hobbes enthusiast to one of the most important figures in the world of contemporary comics. She was an integral part of the very beginning of the webcomics movement, creating titles such as Sparkneedle for Girlamatic and Templar, Arizona, which ran regularly from 2005-2014. In 2007, before Kickstarter, she successfully crowdfunded Templar, AZ’s publication in book form. This led to Trotman founding the acclaimed Iron Circus Comics imprint in 2005, which has launched legendary anthologies such as The Sleep of Reason and Smut Peddler. Trotman has won two Web Cartoonist’s Choice awards in 2006 and one Glyph Comics award in 2007 for Templar, AZ. She is currently working on a graphic biography of Josephine Baker.

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CARTOONING IN AN ANXIOUS AGE

Cartooning In An Anxious Age (pdf) is a free comic by Cara Bean on the act of drawing, which focuses your attention and intimately connects you with the generative act of creation. It’s an inspiring read.

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Let's Talk About It: A Graphic Guide to Mental Health

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Using the power of comics to teach teens about the way our government works This Is What Democracy Looks Like, A Graphic Guide To Governance is a 32-page comic book created by The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS). This short comic guide helps to bring democracy back to the hands of the people by explaining what democracy actually means and how the whole thing works. This guide will be a great jumping-off point to learn about our government.

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