Associate Fellow: Alison Bechdel
We're delighted that Alison Bechdel,
the world-renowned cartoonist, will be visiting the
Centre on an associate fellowship in February 2006.
She will spend two weeks in the UK. During the first
week, she will visit the Centre at the University of
Kent and speak on the ways in which issues of gender
and sexuality inform her work. She will also hold a
'cartooning basics' workshop for Centre members and
members of the public. During the second week, Alison
will participate in a roundtable with other well-known
cartoonists such as Jackie Fleming, Kate Charlesworth
and Suzi Varti at the newly re-launched Cartoon Museum
(see http://www.cartooncentre.com/).
In addition she will give a talk on her own work, again
as part of a joint event between the Centre and the
Cartoon Museum.
On 1 February 2006, Alison will be participating in
a roundtable at the university of Westminster, organised
jointly between the Centre and the newly-relaunched
Cartoon
Museum from 6.30pm. She will also be signing books.
There may be a small charge for attendance at this event.
On 9 February 2006, Alison will give a talk to the
Centre at the University of Kent, followed by a reception
at the University's Centre
for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature.
Download the Events
Poster
If you are interested in attending either event, please
contact Emily Grabham on e.grabham@kent.ac.uk,
even if you are a Centre member.
You can see Alison's comic strip (Dykes to Watch Out
For) at http://www.dykestowatchoutfor.com/.
More Information on Alison Bechdel and her Dykes
to Watch Out For
Dykes To Watch Out For reproduces the texture of 21st
century life, queer and otherwise, in exactingly high
resolution. The finely-drawn characters fuse high and
low culture in a serial graphic narrative suitable for
humanists of all persuasions. The Comics Journal says,
"Bechdel's art distills the pleasures of Friends
and The Nation; we recognize our world in it, with its
sorrows and ironies."Bechdel grew up in rural Pennsylvania.
After graduating from Oberlin College, she moved to
New York City, where she began drawing Dykes to Watch
Out For as a feature in the feminist monthly Womanews
in 1983. Eleven book-length DTWOF collections have since
appeared, four of them--including SPAWN OF DYKES TO
WATCH OUT FOR and DYKES AND SUNDRY OTHER CARBON-BASED
LIFE-FORMS TO WATCH OUT FOR, have won Lambda Literary
Awards. The most recent volume, INVASION OF THE DYKES
TO WATCH OUT FOR was released by Alyson Books in the
fall of 2005. Her bi-weekly strip is syndicated in over
40 periodicals.
Bechdel's work has become a countercultural institution.
"Hers are thinkers' comics," writes Harvey
Pekar, "full of the stuff that classics like Gasoline
Alley and Doonesbury are made of." Bechdel's work
appeared recently alongside Aaron McGruder's Boondocks
and David Rees' Get Your War On in Attitude 2: The New
Subversive Alternative Cartoonists (NBM, 2004). Four
of her books have won Lambda Literary Awards for Humor,
and The Indelible Alison Bechdel won a Lambda Literary
Award in the biography/autobiography category. Utne
magazine has listed DTWOF as "one of the greatest
hits of the Twentieth Century."
In addition to her comic strip, Bechdel has also done
exclusive work for a slew of publications including
Ms., Slate, The Village Voice, The Advocate, Out, and
many other newspapers, web sites, comic books, and 'zines.
Her graphic memoir FUN HOME will be published by Houghton
Mifflin in the spring of 2006.
She lives near Burlington, Vermont.
