In 1994, Stephen Chbosky discovered the main character of his soon-to-be smash hit novel “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” while writing what he calls “a very different story.” Chbosky grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and moved to California to study film writing at USC. His cinematic work was soon…
See also: The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman on Webcomics, Cereal, and His Upcoming Visit to Changing Hands Artist Matthew Inman is doing his damndest to benefit mankind, one web-comic at a time. Besides instructing the millions who surf over to his ultra-popular website and online comic The Oatmeal in the proper…
Welcome back to Explicitly Graphic, a monthly by Cynthia Clark Harvey (who’s working on a graphic novel of her own). From time to time, Harvey will review graphic novels, talk to artists, and dive into the scene of all things explicitly graphic. Today, she sits down with journalist and cartoonist…
Laurie Notaro is an author, crafter, and expert at finding a good cocktail. She grew up in Phoenix, but is currently based in Eugene, Oregon. Each week, she’ll be joining us to share a crafting adventure, draw a flowchart, or remember a few of her favorite things about Phoenix. Today,…
The members of the Cult of the Yellow Sign tend to grab attention wherever they go, which is to be expected, considering they’re adorned head-to-toe in jet-black cloaks and openly discuss bringing about the end of the world. For instance, when we interviewed both members of the tounge-in-cheek local “doomsday…
Laurie Notaro is an author, crafter, and expert at finding a good cocktail. She grew up in Phoenix, but is currently based in Eugene, Oregon. Each week, she’ll be joining us to share a crafting adventure, draw a flowchart, or remember a few of her favorite things about Phoenix. Today,…
Journalist and blogger Jenny Lawson’s new memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), features a photograph of a stuffed mouse on the cover. The mouse is dressed as Hamlet, in a white ruff and red-lined cape, and holds a tiny mouse skull in its paw. It’s a…
Gore Vidal was an American author, screenwriter, playwright, and activist celebrated for his public political criticism and was often called an early champion of sexual liberation. Vidal was born in New York, was first published when he was 19 years old, and continued to write novels, essays, memoirs, and plays…
So what do you do if you wake up one day with a strange new urge to make comics? How do you learn to write and draw what legendary cartoonist Will Eisner dubbed “sequential art”? If you’re under 14, you can probably find a comics workshop at your branch library,…
From time to time, Jackalope Ranch contributors will provide a visual guide to every day and extraordinary situations … and Claire Lawton will illustrate them. This week: author Laurie Notaro answers a very important question: Am I a Book Snob? Welcome to Charted Territory. Laurie Notaro’s Summer Reading List for…
When Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art announced it was bringing author, performer, and all-around-kickass entertainer Tania Katan on board, we knew things were about to get interesting. This month, Katan will launch her latest programed event, Lit Lounge. What Katan describes as a little rock’n’roll, a little This American Life,…
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a very different kind of comicon. Organized by University of Chicago associate professor Hillary Chute (Graphic Women, 2006), “Comics: Philosophy & Practice” brought together 17 heavy hitters in comics (aka cartooning, aka graphic novels, aka illustrated manuscripts, aka well, thankfully…
Dr. Marlene Tromp is the Director of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Her latest book, Untold Titanic, invites readers to learn the truth on the Titanic’s 100th Anniversary. A 50-page,…
Every week, writers for Phoenix New Times and our parent company, Village Voice Media, produce elegant magazine-style feature writing — a gritty portion of which comes in the form of true-crime stories. VVM has collected some of its best recent true-crime yarns into an ebook: Seven Sins: A True Crime…
Many writers claim to hit on “the biggest story of our era,” as Atlantic correspondent James Fallows said at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art last Friday night. And with China Airborne, the National Magazine Award-winning journalist’s tenth book, the claim might be true. “Will China Dominate the Skies?”, a discussion co-presented…
There’s a huge lineup of geeky cool writing workshops at this year’s Phoenix Comicon, where you can try your hand at writing dystopian fantasy, paranormal fiction, steampunk fiction, faerie lore, zombie erotica (to name a few).There’s plenty of books and authors programming to sink your teeth into throughout the four-day convention,…
Since when did owning a cat become the social equivalent of wearing a fanny pack? It’s seems that cats, and especially cat owners, have gotten bad rap for years. If you’re a guy with a cat, people tend to question your masculinity. If you’re a woman with a cat, you…
Gregory Sale, who won the Mid-Career Artist Award at last year’s Phoenix Art Museum Contemporary Forum, passed the baton at the 2012 awards ceremony last week with an art opening in the museum’s main hall. He describes the work as a proposal for an outreach effort aimed toward at-risk youth…
[jump] Live jazz, spoken word, performance art, and spontaneous readings from the audience will set the tone for honoring Hurston, one of the greatest Harlem Renaissance writers, this Thursday night. Project Humanities director Neal Lester says the idea for Vital Voices grew unexpectedly from a Facebook conversation between himself and…
Good mothers are hard to find, but if you’re looking for an auditorium-full (and want to impress your own, very good mother for Mother’s Day weekend) you won’t need to travel beyond Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Tomorrow, current and past participants of “Mothers Who Write,” a workshop led by New…
As of last week, Arizona was one of eight states without a State Poet Laureate, a position established in states and countries around the world, in which a local established poet educates students and residents about poetry and literature. For the last 18 months, members of the Arizona Commission on…
Maurice Sendak was a giant in the children’s literature world whose titles include Seven Little Monsters, Fantasy Sketches, Outside Over There and Where the Wild Things Are. He said his love for books developed when he was young and had health complications that confined him to his bed. And for…
