The so-called Graphic Novel, while around for 50,000, 180, 90, 37, or 20 years (depending on your point of view), arguably got revitalized when Seattle's Fantagraphics published Dan Clowes' Ghost World in 1997. Earning an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay adaptation in 2000, Clowes has also published multiple editions of Eightball, the book and screenplay Art School Confidential, and a serialized work in New York Times Magazine. He's joined in this program by Adrian Tomine, who has received extensive praise for Shortcomings. Artist and professor Ivan Brunetti (author of Schizo and editor of The Anthology of Graphic Fiction) will host and interview the event.
Dan Clowes
Oakland, CA 
visit website
Dan Clowes is a popular cartoonist who, with cult classics like the comic book series Eightball, has gained a large following of fans. Clowes recently released the 10th-anniversary edition of Ghost World, the graphic novel that inspired him to write the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the popular movie of the same name.
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine created the comic book series Optic Nerve as well as the books Summer Blonde and Sleepwalk and Other Stories. His works have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and McSweeney's. Tomine's latest book Shortcomings focuses on his character's struggles with self-generated Asian and American stereotypes.
Ivan Brunetti
Noted for combining blackly-humorous, taboo-laden subject matter with simplified and exaggerated cartoon drawing styles, Brunetti's best-known work is collected in the series Schizo (Fantagraphics). He also edited An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (2006, Yale University Press). A second volume will be published this October.
