Brooklyn comics store Desert Island presents its eleventh-annual free festival at Pratt Institute, which draws exhibitors and guests from around the world to Pratt’s 42,000 sq ft ARC building, the second-largest room in Brooklyn.

This year’s show includes a full day of free talks and lectures on Pratt’s campus, including:
- Chris Ware interviewed by Art Speigelman and Françoise Mouly about his career since appearing in their RAW magazine in 1981
- Aline Kominsky-Crumb interviewed by Lauren Weinstein about the lives and loves of alter ego Honeybunch Kominsky
- Charles Burns and Gary Panter discussing “Drawing as a way of Thinking”
- Kim Deitch and Nina Bunjevac interviewing each other about “The Sublime Detail”
- Frank Santoro and Pittsburgh: Representing Hometown, Family, and Possibility
- “Decolonising Comics,” exploring why comix and zines are spearheading the conversation around decolonization
- “Invisible Wall: Drawing Across Borders,” a surrealist-activist drawing game between artists from New York and Mexico

***All this, plus over 300 artists and exhibitors selling comics, artists’ books, prints, and ephemera, including tons of rare, self-published, and exclusive material***

THE FOLLOWING DAY, join us at Market Hotel to unwind at the free CABaret Voltaire variety show, curated by Matthew Thurber. Including: Ben Katchor on Dairy Restaurants! Puppet show by John Mejias! True confessions by Siobahn Gallagher! A Siberian comic fest documentary! Vintage cartoons! Comedy! Weird performances! Andrew Jeffrey Wright! Julia Gfrörer! Surprise and Revelation!
CABaret Voltaire
Market Hotel, 1140 Myrtle Ave, 2-7 PM, Sunday 11/3, FREE

Join Anders Nilsen at Gosh Comics, Books in London for brief talk and signing from the second chapter of his new long-form comic Tongues. 

Join Anders Nilsen at Lucky's Comics, Books, and Gallery in Vancouver Canada for a reading and discussion from the first chapter of his new long-form comic Tongues. 

Set in Modern Central Asia Tongues follows the intertwined stories of an imprisoned god, an East African orphan on an errand of murder and a young American man with a teddy bear, lost on the tattered fringes of the human world. It is a story of adventure and revenge and a meditation on human nature in the fraught present moment.

Tongues is loosely based on a trilogy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, of which two plays are lost and only dimly reconstructed by historians. Key to the story of Tongues is Prometheus’ role as creator and protector of humanity. In flashbacks and in Prometheus’ conversations with the eagle and others, the book will touch on humanity’s deep evolutionary past and its complicated prospects for a future. Tongues is both adventure story and meditation on human nature in our present fraught historical moment.

The full-color, large-format Tongues is Nilsen’s most ambitious work to date and marks a return to something a bit closer to the more traditional comics form he last explored in his multiple award winning Big Questions (Drawn and Quarterly, 2011).

The artist is serializing the book in large-format, full-color comics to be self-published and distributed in conjunction with No Miracles Press over the next few years until the story is complete.

Join Short Run's 7th annual Comics festival, as they feature over 270 exhibitor artists from around the world including artists from France, Peru, Taiwan, Argentina, Canada, the UK, and programming such as life-size coloring pages from Anders Nilsen’s “A Walk In Eden”, an art show "Cu Chi +0" featuring artists from the residency in Vietnam, animation curated by Clyde Petersen for Seattle Experimental Animation Team, “New Dream World:The Midnight Variety Hour” a performance by Sean Christensen, Daria Tessler, and other Portland artists, storytelling and drawing workshops with Tom Hart and Gemma Correll, panel talks with Leela Corman, Emil Ferris, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Jesús Cossio, Joe Sacco, Sarah Glidden, and much more! 

The book expo will take place at Fisher Pavilion, and this year creative programming will run concurrently at The Vera Project. Full schedule available on our website: http://shortrun.org/full-festival-schedule-nov-2nd-5th/

Special Guests: Anders Nilsen, Leela Corman, Tom Hart, Flora Kam (France), Julia Wertz, Gemma Correll (UK), Jordan Crane, Dash Grant winner Rebecca Artemisa; and shared guests through our partnership with International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF): Jesús Cossio (Peru), Moto Hagio (Japan), Emil Ferris, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Nick Sousanis, Gary Groth, Jim Woodring, Ramzi Fawaz.

Thanks to the generous support of The National Endowment for the Arts, The Norcliffe Foundation, 4Culture, Washington State Arts Commission, and Tulalip Cares. Media support by The Seattle Weekly and KUOW.

Accessibility info at Seattle Center: http://www.seattlecenter.com/about/accessibility.aspx

Join Short Run and many artist exhibitors arriving into town! Featuring original artwork by Emil Ferris, Tom Hart, Leela Corman, Julia Wertz, Jordan Crane, Gemma Correll, nishat akhtar, Rebecca Artemisa, Anders Nilsen. Readings by Anders Nilsen and 2dcloud artists. Light beverages provided. 

Join Anders Nilsen at Moon Palace in Minneapolis, MN for a reading and discussion from the first chapter of his new long-form comic Tongues. 

Set in Modern Central Asia Tongues follows the intertwined stories of an imprisoned god, an East African orphan on an errand of murder and a young American man with a teddy bear, lost on the tattered fringes of the human world. It is a story of adventure and revenge and a meditation on human nature in the fraught present moment.

Tongues is loosely based on a trilogy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, of which two plays are lost and only dimly reconstructed by historians. Key to the story of Tongues is Prometheus’ role as creator and protector of humanity. In flashbacks and in Prometheus’ conversations with the eagle and others, the book will touch on humanity’s deep evolutionary past and its complicated prospects for a future. Tongues is both adventure story and meditation on human nature in our present fraught historical moment.

The full-color, large-format Tongues is Nilsen’s most ambitious work to date and marks a return to something a bit closer to the more traditional comics form he last explored in his multiple award winning Big Questions (Drawn and Quarterly, 2011).

The artist is serializing the book in large-format, full-color comics to be self-published and distributed in conjunction with No Miracles Press over the next few years until the story is complete.

 

For most vocations – plumbing, say, the law, farming, whatever – the social need one is fulfilling, the point, is fairly plain. But what is art making for? What is storytelling? Might it simply be a thinly veiled exercise in self-indulgence? Would that matter? Drawing from his own practice, experience and observation as well as from explorations in the literature of human nature, evolution and history, Anders Nilsen will discuss the sometimes surprising ways his own answers to these questions have evolved and unfolded since his time as a student, in parallel with his own work, over the course of a life and career spent drawing pictures and telling stories. Participants will be guided through a short series of collaborative comics exercises to further draw out the questions for their own practice.

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Workshop participation is limited. 

Fiction of the Absurd: Tales of the Weird, Wild, and Strange

Things get weird in these three new books. The last three citizens of a town populated by people with hereditary oddities face the last days of their community in Robert Hill’s The Remnants. The twelve stories in Alexandra Kleeman’s Intimations feature a room with no exit, an apocalypse of disappearance, and a house party wherein the key to survival is knowing the difference between fake and real blood. Anders Nilsen presents a fantastical view of primeval creation and a world void of humans in the illustrations of A Walk in Eden. Moderated by Amanda Nelson of Book Riot.

Advance tickets are $15 (day-of tickets $18) and include a wristband for all-day admission to the Portland Art Museum for the day. Attendees 17 and younger and anyone with a valid high school student ID attend the festival for FREE.