Social Media Round-up

Many news stories, article links, and announcements are posted on the Graphic Medicine Facebook and Twitter pages, so if you use those sites but don’t follow us there, be sure to do so to get the latest Graphic Medicine updates.

But not everyone is on social media (WHAAAAA?) and even if you are, it’s easy to miss something that might be of interest. So to that end, here’s a summary of the summer in Graphic Medicine social media. Warning: many links follow. May be a bit overwhelming!

ARTICLES OF INTEREST –

• Great Buzzfeed post by Kristen Radtke: 23 Female Cartoonists On Drawing Their Bodies. Graphic Medicine presenters Katie Green and Ellen Forney are among the artists quoted in this piece.
• Daily Mail article about Matilda Tristram’s new book, Probably Nothing, A Diary of Not-Your-Average Nine Months
• A moving piece that sparked much sharing: The Devastation Of Alzheimer’s Portrayed In 5 Years Of Self-Portraits By Suffering Artist
• Author of The Infinite Wait, Julia Wertz, discusses Roz Chast’s new book, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? on this podcast. 
• “One of Marvel’s Avengers Turns to Sign Language” from a NYTimes blog
• An Autistic Superhero featured in The Sentinel

CONFERENCE FOLLOW UP –

Quite a few posts discussing the 2014 Baltimore Comics & Medicine Conference. Here are the media pieces:

• Joesph Brin for Metropolis Magazine
•  Whit Taylor for CBR 
• MedPage Today piece
• Baltimore’s City Paper piece
• Sharon Packer’s piece for Psychiatric Times (requires free registration to read)
• Lancet piece by Francesca Towey (payment or institutional access required to view)

And here are the blog entries:

•  Benita Fernando’s post on the Dharavi Biennale site
• Brian Fies’ blog post on the conference
•  Merideth Li-Volmer’s post for The Gone Girl Comics Blog
• Booster Shot Comics conference summary
• sketch notes by Shannon Loomer
• Comicsgirl post
• Lydia Wysocki’s post, with sketch notes, in two parts.

NEWS FROM THE GRAPHIC MEDICINE COMMUNITY:

• Site founder Ian Williams’ first graphic novel, The Bad Doctor, is out! Graphic Medicine and the book were discussed in Spanish in this article, and in English in this one. He was also interviewed on the BBC, and you can hear that podcasted here. For even more on Ian’s new book, be sure to follow it on Facebook and Ian on Twitter (@TheBadDr).
• Sarah Lightman has a piece in a new book, The Unspeakable Narratives of Trauma
•  Michael Green and MK Czerwiec are quoted in this story about Roz Chast’s new book.
• The forthcoming Graphic Medicine Manifesto (Penn State University Press, summer 2015) is in production! A comic that MK & Ian did which will not appear in the book was posted on the site.
• Rachel Abrams’ project Pins and Needles is an arresting visual essay about fertility, reproductive technology and social politics.
• Riva Lehrer’s post about curating the Vesalius 500 event at the New York Academy of Medicine October 18th. Ian and MK will be presenting on Graphic Medicine at the event.
• Palliative Care Comic by Isabella Bannerman
• Comics & Medicine 2010 Chicago conference presenter John Porcellino’s forthcoming graphic novel, Hospital Suite premiered at San Diego ComicCon.
• Dash Shaw has a new fiction graphic novel coming out called Doctors. The Fantagraphics description states that the premise is that “doctors have developed a medical device—dubbed the Charon—that can lift recently-dead patients out of their self-created afterlife and revive them….This tautly crafted story… is as much about the interpersonal relationships that develop between doctor and patient during this traumatic procedure as it is about exploring the concepts—and subsequent repercussions—of reviving the dead.”
• There are several new conference podcasts posted as I (MK) try to wrap up the Brighton posts, before beginning the Baltimore posts. Be sure to listen to Andrew Godfrey and Emma Jeremie discuss their collaborative work, and listen to Panel 4A: Whose Story is it Anyway? featuring Peaco Todd, Paula Knight, and Linda Raphael.

IN CLOSING…

a quote from Dana Walrath’s Aliceheimer’s:Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass

“Stigma, silence, and social death surround rejected ways of being and echo through the hallways of hospitals, medical school lecture rooms, and textbooks. This is where stories and comics come in. They can rewrite the dominant narrative. Around the world, comic artists, caretakers, parents, and assorted onlookers are taking up their drawing tools, pens, papers, scissors, and computers to depict illness and ways of being human that have been stigmatized. This is graphic medicine.”