Paula Knight’s Spooky Womb is an excerpt from her graphic memoir in progress The Facts of Life, which was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions First Fictions Graphic Novel competition. In this excerpt, she very creatively (and nearly wordlessly) recounts her “interactions” with fertility, pregnancy, and loss via an anthropomorphized female reproductive tract. The three panel horizontal layout serves her narrative quite well, while varied background shading seems to reflect the diurnal and menstrual cycles. A skilled illustrator, Knight is able to convey a wide range of gesture and emotion from her visceral character, making one wonder which is the protagonist – uterus… Read More
New Podcast Wednesday: Nicola Streeten is a winner!
Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. Briefly interrupting the current series of audio from the Toronto conference, this week’s podcast is an excerpt from a conversation I had with Nicola Streeten at Leon’s cafe in King’s Cross rail station. I had the chance to sit down with Nicola during my recent trip to the UK. She discusses her graphic memoir, Billy, Me, & You and the Highly Commended award it received last week from the British Medical Association. She also discusses her academic underpinnings… Read More
Paula Knight on The Facts of Life: a graphic memoir about miscarriage and childlessness
Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. Paula uses her graphic memoir-in-progress, The Facts of Life to demonstrate visual exploration of the stigma-inducing health issues of miscarriage, resulting ‘childlessness’, and ME/CFS. Paula works from her home studio in Bristol as a freelance illustrator, writer and proofreader. She divides her time between anthropomorphising animals, bemoaning the absence of Plain English in corporate literature and working on her graphic- memoir-in-progress. She’s fairly new to the world of comics, and, having worked extensively within children’s… Read More