On Friday, Ian & MK taught a Graphic Medicine workshop to the medical illustration students at the University of Toronto. The students were very excited and engaged – in fact, despite it being a Friday evening, many stuck around to chat informally after the workshop ended.
Saturday and Sunday the Graphic Medicine TCAF table was very active! In fact, all of the books you see on the table on the right (and all the backup copies) SOLD OUT!
On Saturday late afternoon Ian Williams, Kriota Willberg, Gareth Brooks, and I (MK Czerwiec) participated in a panel about Graphic Medicine. The full crowd gathered was very interested and enthusiastic. Many of them came to our table to further discuss Graphic Medicine on Sunday. Special thanks goes to Jamie Coville for photo above, as well as taping and posting our panel at TCAF. The audio is available at the link below.
Graphic Medicine (58:24, 54.8mb)
Participating were Ian Williams, MK Czerwic, Kriota Willberg and Gareth Brookes. Ian and MK talked about Moms Cancer as being an inspiring book for them, together they made the Graphic Medicine website and now have had many conferences in several cities regarding using comics in health care, they gave examples of comics being used in health care and why they are great, Gareth Brookes spoke about his book A Thousand Castles, which is about a rare disease that causes people to see hallucinations and why he drew the book in crayon. MK Czerwic showed her comic called Taking Turns about her job as a nurse, her working for a notable AIDS care center in Chicago and the history of the place. Kriota Willberg described her comics that come from her years as being a massage therapist and promoting self care before needing medical help. She also spoke of her contribution to a pro-choice comic drawing accurate pictures of embryos, fetuses and babies and did research on when the various religions believe a soul is born and when a fetus can survive outside the womb. Ian Williams talked about his book Bad Doctor, some of which goes into the OCD he had at an earlier age and the humorous medical cartoons he draws now. Within the Q&A they spoke about Jack Black and how they don’t define what a Graphic Medicine comic is. Note: I lost the tail end of this panel due to a recorder malfunction.
Finally, it was a great thrill to see a Graphic Medicine-themed book, Bird in a Cage by Rebecca Roher, won the Doug Wright Award for book of the year! Yay! Well deserved, it’s wonderful.
TCAF was a huge success, Toronto is a terrific city, and we will be back!
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