Rainy Friday Goodness

Hello, readers. It's Friday and it's raining, but there's much to sing and dance in puddles about.

Joe Hill, blogger, twitterer, writer of heartfelt horror (20th Century Ghosts, Heart-Shaped Box) has decided there should be a contest in recognition of March being love-your-indie-bookstore month. He's giving away a signed, slipcased copy of his novella, Gunpowder. Subterranean Press, so taken by Joe's contest coolness, has decided to offer up ten prizes of their own, including a limited edition of Neil Gaiman's Newberry Award winning, The Graveyard Book.

A lengthy interview with Lynda Barry has popped up over at the Chicago Tribune. Read it to learn about her spaceship in the middle of a farm and her supernatural ability to sit still. Also, there's some kind of narrative concerning her rise and fade and current resurrection as far as being the hero of underground comics. Chris Ware says she taught comic book writers how to "write from the inside-out." Ivan Brunetti says, "it's becoming increasingly known she moved the medium [comics] closer to real literature."

Also, Dave McKean is interviewed by Seven Impossible Things. An absurd amount of cool, dark, yearning sort of art abounds. Seriously, there's a lot of pictures. But also some words. And occasional evil laughter.


Have a shiny weekend, readers.

What It Is: Lynda Barry Interview

Happy news, readers! Cartoonist, novelist, playwright, and friend to collages everywhere, Lynda Barry, has agreed to an interview for the forthcoming issue of The Yalobusha Review. She's the creator behind dozens and dozens of comic strips which, in the eighties, gained her a cult following and led to the occasional appearance on "Late Night With David Letterman." Strips of her syndicated comic, Ernie Pook's Comeek, have appeared on Salon and been collected in, The Freddy Stories and The Greatest of Marlys. She's also the author of several sorts of books. The kind with pictures, like Cruddy, named one of the top ten books of the year by EW in 2000, or The Good Times Are Killing Me, winner of the Washington Governor's Writing Award, and the kind with more pictures, the "autobifictionalographic" One Hundred Demons, for example, or the combination memoir/activity book/storytelling manual/all-around paen to images, What It Is.

Lynda Barry allows her characters and drawings to be squiggly and frantic and vulnerable. Her stories are silly and serious, funny and resonant. But you don't have to take my word for it, listen to what these people say:

EW called her "America’s leading cartoon artist of childhood angst." From the San Francisco Chronicle: "Barry is not just a storyteller, she’s an evangelist who urges people to pick up a pen—or a brush . . . and look at their own lives with fresh, forgiving eyes.” And Dave Eggers, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said, "Lynda Barry has no peer," and in discussing her work, "we're approaching a word not commonly employed when talking of cartoons, oeuvre." Cartoonist as auteur, indeed.

Check out other reviews and examples of Lynda's work at Salon. Head over to myspace and learn about Lynda's traveling workshop, Writing the Unthinkable. Learn how to draw. Have fun.