Arlington Reads: Damian Duffy & John Jennings, in photos

 Another excellent event at Arlington Library - it'll be on YouTube and I'll post that link, but here's the description and some of my photos.

An Arlington Reads Signature Author Event

Join us for a conversation between Library Director Diane Kresh and authors and illustrators Damian Duffy and John Jennings to talk about their graphic novel adaptations of Octavia Butler's "Kindred" and "Parable of the Sower." 

Damian Duffy and John Jennings' adaptation of Octavia Butler's bestselling classic, "Kindred," quickly became a bestseller in its own right. The graphic novel won both the Bram Stoker and Eisner Awards. John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and all-around champion of Black culture. Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and a Glyph Comics, Eisner Comics, Bram Stoker, and Hugo Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist.

Damian Duffy

Shawn Martinbrough greeting John Jennings and meeting Damian Duffy.

Shawn Martinbrough and Bill Campbell of Rosarium Publishing

One More Page bookstore staff

Hope Larson at Arlington county library

Sierra Barnes was at Arlington County Central Library today

As part of Arlington libraries maker space open house, Sierra spoke about how to create a graphic novel using Procreate. The software, which works on Apple's iPads, and not anywhere else, seems to be really strong for making comics.

The audience was the usual mix of extremely young children with parents looking to occupy them, and teens who want to make webcomics and perhaps do it for a living, and then crotchety old people like me.  I found it fascinating to watch Sierra work even with TMNT knockoff suggestions from the kids. Her graphic novel, Hans Vogel is Dead, is adapted from her ongoing webcomic and is much darker... It's about a dead WWII German flyer navigating an underworld that seems to be based on traditional Grimm fairy tales.

Sierra also has a booth at the Torpedo Factory where she is in residence from Thursday through Sunday.