Oct 30: Kayla E at GMU

Author/Illustrator Kayla E.: PRECIOUS RUBBISH Thursday, October 30, 4:45pm - 6:30pm @ GMU Center for the Arts, 4373 Mason Pond Dr., Fairfax Join us at George Mason University's Center for the Arts for an upcoming Visual Voices presentation with author and illustrator Kayla E. Zoom link also available day-of for those registered. She will be discussing her most recent release Precious Rubbish, a landmark graphic novel debut and groundbreaking work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children's comics. Bards Alley will be on-site selling copies of the book for Kayla to sign after her talk. About PRECIOUS RUBBISH: Kayla E.'s Precious Rubbish is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century children's comics and tells the story of a childhood shaped by maternal emotional dysregulation, rural poverty, and incest. The author's childhood is portrayed as a collection of short-form comics and gag panels punctuated by interactive elements like paper dolls, satirical advertisements, games, and puzzles. While the work is concerned with violence and a particularly Texan brand of Pentecostal fanaticism, it is presented in a playful visual language with a deadpan humor that elevates the material beyond mere graphic memoir. Precious Rubbish is a landmark work of comics storytelling and graphic medicine. The debut graphic novel asks the reader to do the extratextual work of filling out narrative gaps, which mirrors the challenge of trauma recollection. The reader is invited to co-labor in the meaning-making process, an exercise that facilitates an intimacy (between the author, the subject, and the reader) that is at once horrifying and hilarious. About the author: Kayla E. (she/her) is an award-winning Texas-born artist. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She is the co-founder and former President of Nat. Brut Inc., a non-profit that produces an art and literary magazine, of which she was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she served as the Art Director for the Harvard Lampoon. Precious Rubbish, her graphic novel debut, is a work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children's comics. Kayla lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs.