Brooklyn Zine Fest in the New York Times

Matt Carman and Kseniya Yarosh got a nice mention on the New York Times website, about the Brooklyn Zine Fest here. I got a shout out as well--click and scroll down for a link to this blog, where you can then click on the link again and involve yourself in some sort of weird loop. Or just get a copy of today's paper and check out p C29 in the Weekend Arts II section. And please come to the zine fest on Sunday! It's free, so you can devote all of your hard-earned cash to buying interesting ephemera. Come say hello!

Photo courtesy Brooklyn Zine Fest.

Breakers Release at Desert Island 4/25

In October last year I was invited to study at a three-week-long residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Dave Kelly and Lara Antal of So What? Press have created an anthology of work from the residency, Breakers. I'm very honored to be part of it and will be at the official launch party, hosted by Desert Island on April 25th. From the press release:

The book will have its East Coast premiere at Desert Island, 540 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY on Thursday, April 25th at 7:00 pm.  The event is free and open to the public.  Beer and cookies (in the shape of sharks) will be provided.  The book will be offered at a discounted price of $10.00 at this event. 
The book will be available in stores and online the following week.  So What? Press handles all distribution worldwide.  For more information, visit www.sowhatpress.com. 

So What? Press, the new publishing imprint headed by Dave Kelly & Lara Antal, is set to release Breakers, an anthology of comics featuring Ellen Forney, Dean Haspiel, Megan Kelso, and twenty-two other outstanding cartoonists:  Jessica Ruliffson, Gabrielle Gamboa, Gregory MacKay, Lark Pien, Boum (Samantha Leriche-Gionet), Nusha Ashjaee, George Folz, Jp Pollard, Jen Breach, Lara Antal, Rebecca Case, Jean Chen, Julie Condon, Gabrielle Greenlee, Lynda May, K-Fai Steele, Theresa Coulter, Sean Ironman, Christa Cassano, Fionnuala Doran, James Greene, and Meghan Lands.

From the back cover:
In October 2012, twenty-six comics creators descended upon Central Florida for a three-week residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.  These lost souls were set adrift in an incubator of creativity amidst killer sharks, a local nude beach, and other primordial nature.  Under the tutelage of Ellen Forney, Dean Haspiel, and Megan Kelso, a body of work was generated that interwove many similar themes based on their new found tropical isolation.  What you hold in your hands is a summation of that experience, a document of a wondrous blur of creative freedom, and perhaps an artifact of a comics paradise lost.

Interview on The Beat

Dre Grigoropol interviewed me for The Comics Beat, check it out here. I talk about the Joe Bonham Project, comics I like, and awesome veterans I've met. Thanks Dre!

Good Times at The Drawing Center

A few weeks ago I had the honor and privilege of speaking about my involvement with the Joe Bonham Project, an artist activist group that seeks to raise awareness about wounded veterans (physical as well as psychological traumas).

I was nervous about speaking, so I tried out this neat trick I learned from Lacy Rhoades. He once had to give a speech in front of all the staff at his job (he's a programmer for Etsy and also a talented photographer). Before he started the speech, he quietly took a picture of the crowd at the podium with his iPhone. Looking back at the photo I took now, I am amazed at how kind and sweet everyone in the crowd was--I couldn't see it clearly at the time because of my pre-speech jitters. It ended up going well and I had a really great time. A lot of fabulous questions were asked and really helped me think about my work in new ways. So thanks to the friends reading this who came out and showed your support, you are loved and appreciated! And I hope you think you look lovely in the photograph below.

I also took a photograph of myself in the downstairs bathroom at the Drawing Center because:

a) The entire space has been remodeled and it is a really lovely restroom, especially for a public restroom (in New York, no less!)
b) I thought I should document the experience; it was handy I thought I looked pretty fly in my fancy dress, with my new haircut. I'm also showing support for one of the veterans I met at Bethesda in August, Nathan Rimpf, with a wristband his sister designed. His family sells them for $1 to help with the bills, but you have to beg them to take your money, they pretty much give them to everyone they meet. There's a great photo album on his support page on Facebook, documenting where in the world all the wristbands have made it to, it's amazing.  You can check it out here: Where in the World are Nathan's Wristbands?

Drawing Center Talk Tonight

If you're in NYC, come check out this talk I'm giving at The Drawing Center about my participation in the Joe Bonham Project:

For Immediate Release

Comics Journalist Jess Ruliffson Collects Veteran Narratives for Upcoming Graphic Novel
February 13th, 2013, 6:30-7:30pm, The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, NYC 10013
Jess Ruliffson in a Brooklyn based comics journalist currently working on her first graphic novel. In this presentation and comic reading, Jess Ruliffson discusses her work with the Joe Bonham Project, where she and several artists visited wounded veterans at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, drawing and documenting their stories to serve the public in cultivating a better understanding and awareness of the impact of war on this generation. The Joe Bonham Project was founded 2010 by Michael D. Fay, a combat artist and former Marine, along with several other artists, in an effort to catalog veterans' experiences as part of the public record. Jess Ruliffson has taken these veterans' narratives, along with other service members' stories, and serialized them in comic book form. Q + A with the artist to follow.

Haditha/Katrina on Newsstands Now in OA New South Journalism Issue

The first eight pages of Haditha/Katrina (in full, glorious color) are featured in the current New South Journalism Issue of The Oxford American. Get yourself a copy at your local bookstore!

I will post a shameless photo update when I get my copy. Thanks to Wes Enzinna and the rest at OA for being gracious enough to spell check and add commas where applicable. You guys are great.

If you scroll to the bottom of their BLOGS page, this blog is currently listed in their contributors section. Yay comics journalism!

In other news, the background of page one of the Haditha comic is my mother's front yard. She lives in Pass Christian, MS and got some serious flooding yesterday, here's a photo for reference:

Brian Carnes in the Syracuse Post-Standard

Brian Carnes, the 20 year old Marine we spoke with at Walter Reed in April who was wounded by bullet fire, was recently interviewed by Melinda Johnson of the Syracuse Post-Standard. It's a really beautifully done article, you can read it here. There's a nice mention of the Joe Bonham Project and the Society of Illustrators, too.