Last stop: Rochester!

Heya, upstate NY! Shake off that tryptophan-induced food coma and help me celebrate the conclusion of VIETNAMERICA's first year of publication this Wednesday at the Mercer Gallery!

"WTF?!OMG!!! and upcoming events" update:

Just informed that VIETNAMERICA won the gold medal in this year's Society of Illustrators competition's sequential category! Un-freakin'-believable!

I will be taking my "stunned speechless" look on the road with several terrific November events, the first being at the...

I'll be giving an author talk this Thursday 17th at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It's free and open to the public, so if you're interested all the deets can be found here.

Then on Friday and Saturday, I'll be participating at the National Council of Teachers of English annual convention:

Friday, 11 am- 12:15 pm: NARRATING LIVES: THE POWER AND POSSIBILITIES OF GRAPHIC LITERATURE with Sid Jacobson, Josh Neufeld, and GB Tran.

Saturday, 2:45 - 4:00 pm: IMMIGRANT LITERATURE FOR THE CLASSROOM with Aleksandr Hemon, Bich Minh Nguyen, GB Tran, and Loung Ung

Outside of these two panels, I'll be loitering at the Random House booth to chat with teachers and attendees and doodling in books until my publisher's Academic Department kicks me out. I'm hoping to have time to partake in other local attractions like Quimby's Bookstore, deep dish pizza, and sleeping on my friend's floor of his under-construction bike shop: Heritage Bicycles.

After the craziness of Thanksgiving passes, I'll be in Rochester November 28-30 for a three day residency at Monroe Community College which includes a workshop, author talk, and the opening reception for a VIETNAMERICA exhibit at the Mercer Gallery. This will be my final event for 2011, and a phenomenal conclusion to the book's first year of publication. That is, getting to show the story in a new context... with free booze and hors d'oeuvres! (Final details forthcoming in the next blog post...)

And despite the deluge of all the great new Fall books, huge gratitude to people still giving my little labor of love, sweat, and tears notice: thanks to Publishers Weekly for including it on their shortlist of Comics and Graphic Novels as Gifts 2011, a great review by Nawaaz Ahmen over at Hyphen, and shout out from Colorlines.

In non-VIETNAMERICA news: I'm illustratin' my ass off, and lovin' every second of it. Example: sketches for a series of textbook illustrations...