Mar 23 2023 - 7:00pm
MASKS REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT. FREE TO ATTEND. No registration required.
It's a double feature! Please join us for this exciting double book launch and visual-reading. MariNaomi (I Thought You Loved Me) and Tessa Brunton (Notes from a Sickbed) will read from their respective graphic memoirs and be in conversation about their work.
Books will be available for purchase at the event.
About I Thought You Loved Me:
This Gen-X memoir, which is told in prose, collage, and sequential art, explores queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and the flawed nature of memory as Mari works to uncover a long-lost best friend that she can no longer remember but can’t let go.
Jodie was Mari’s best friend through their teens and twenties. As young Mari began to explore her identity as a bisexual, biracial outsider in a rich, white town, Jodie was her constant confidant, even kissing Mari out of the closet. The two were inseparable as they sought to gain a foothold in life and love as young feminists, Jodie an entrepreneurial sex worker, and Mari working in the boys’ club of video game development in the late ‘90s. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, Jodie ends their friendship. Years later, Mari is stunned when she discovers why.
Now much older, Mari is ready to forgive, but her memories of Jodie seem to have vanished. Through journal excerpts, letters, conversations with friends, and cross-country travel, she pieces together lost memories from a lost friendship, in an attempt at catharsis. The reader follows in real-time as the author unravels her own mystery, examining the expectations of friendship, the unreliability of memory, and the struggle to let go.
About the author/illustrator:
MariNaomi (they/them) is the award-winning author and illustrator of Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22, Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories, Turning Japanese, I Thought YOU Hated ME, the Life on Earth young adult trilogy, and the erotic fruit and veggies book Dirty Produce. Their work has appeared in over eighty print publications and has been featured on The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Rumpus, LA Review of Books, Midnight Breakfast, and BuzzFeed. Their comics have been translated into French and Russian.
Mari’s art has been featured in the Smithsonian, the de Young Museum, the Cartoon Art Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Japanese American Museum.
In 2011 and 2018, Mari toured with the literary roadshow Sister Spit. They are the founder and administrator of the Cartoonists of Color Database, the Queer Cartoonists Database, and the Disabled Cartoonists Database.
MariNaomi lives in Alameda with their partner and a menagerie of rescue animals. MariNaomi.com
About Notes from a Sickbed:
In 2009, Tessa Brunton experienced the first symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome). She spent much of the next eight years unwell, in a medical holding pattern, housebound and often alone. In 2017, she found a strategy that helped reduce her symptoms, and soon began creating the first installments of a graphic memoir. Notes from a Sickbed collects previously released and brand-new, unseen comics that recall her experiences with honesty, a pointed wit, and a lively visual imagination.
About the author/illustrator:
Tessa Brunton is a cartoonist from the Bay Area whose memoir comics have been nominated for two Ignatz Awards and selected as Notable Comics by the Best American Comics series editors. Her comics have appeared in Bitch Magazine, Maisonneuve Magazine, The Comics Journal, many anthologies, and have also been featured in the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum. She was also the Cartoonist-In-Residence at The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.
Event address:
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
Books:
$14.99
ISBN: 9781728462936
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Graphic Universe (Tm) - November 1st, 2022
Event Category:
Shattuck Location