Reading Frenzy ~ An Independent Press Emporium

June 28, 2012: Print Fancy! is a bi-monthly celebration of self-publishers! A handful of top notch self-publishers read from their work. Plus audience participation! Refreshments! Prizes! This month's participants are:

John Isaacson is a cartoonist and screenprinter whose first graphic novel, Do It Yourself Screenprinting, was published in 2007. Since then he has continued to self-publish several different titles: Pyromania, which is an autobiographical comic; Feedback which is an autobiographical concert review comic; and Grumpy McBumbles, about a fictional happy go-lucky hobo-type character. He currently teaches comics at the IPRC Certificate Program and at Marylhurst University. He'll be reading from the third installment of Grumpy McBumbles, who is a sort of shadow alter-ego developed when the author lived in New York City, and who continues to follow him in our fair city.

Hazel Newlevant is a Portland-raised, SVA-attending cartoonist and illustrator. Her comics are an undisguised mash-up of her favorite topics, especially interpersonal relationships, music and dance, bleak humor, and cute girls. She's into experimental comics and unusual formats, and likes to make mini-comics that unfold, turn upside down, have cutout bits, or are otherwise odd. Her works include the mini-comics Chili Dog Dad and Ci Vediamo, and the faux-children's book People of Coloring Book. Tonight she'll be reading from Curio, a collection of short comics themed around pharmaceutical, sexual, and formal experimentation. Many were inspired by the French experimental comics group OuBaPo, with the idea of creating comics with strange obstacles; a comic that can be read in multiple directions, or a story told only with pictures of hands, or a comic that's an anagram.

Martha Grover is an artist and writer from Portland, Oregon. She's the publisher of Somnambulist and the author of One More for the People (Perfect Day Publishing, 2011). Her work has also been published in Eye Rhyme, Raven Chronicles, We'll Never Have Paris, Switchback Magazine, Tom Tom Magazine, Broken Pencil, The Coachella Review and 400 Words. She has an MFA in creative writing and does artwork in her spare time. Tonight Martha reads from her latest issue, Somnambulist #19. 

Delphine Bedient is an artist and thinker currently based in Portland, Oregon.  When she isn't making things she busses tables in a restaurant.  She likes nighttime walks, the color brown and pencil skirts. She'll be reading from Algeria: Notes on an Unfamiliar Place is a publication about Algeria and the foreign service. The text presented was written by her father as he and her mother joined the foreign service and moved from their life-long home in Lincoln, Nebraska to Algiers, Algeria to work at the US embassy. 

Jeremy Thomas' keen interest in ethnobotany has driven his adventures learning from local cultures in their own unique environments. His studies have taken him to the Boreal forests of Canada, the deserts of the southwest US, the Australian outback and the Ecuadorian Amazon. However, the wilderness within the city has proven equally fascinating, and his work with Urban Edibles has provided both a focus for developing his relationship with plants and a new frontier in foraging and urban survival. He currently works teaching primitive living skills and ethnobotany of the native Puebloan culture at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Boulder, Utah. He'll be reading from 10 Weeds You Can Eat which features common wild edibles that are often considered "weeds". Free, local and ubiquitous, 10 Weeds You Can Eat hopes to inspire people to look in their own backyard for a bit of nourishment.

Zach is a semi-anonymous local author and self-publisher whose books Miami, You've Got Style: A Little Golden Girls Book and Love is Not Constantly Wondering if You are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life are two of our most popular titles. In his latest project A Field Guide to The Aliens of Star Trek Next Generation, he writes from the perspective of Joshua Chapman, an eleven year old boy in the year 1990, who has become fixated on Lieutenant Commander Data as a way of coping with the panic attacks and outbursts of his mother. Each issue moves things forward one season of the show and one year in the life of the author, documenting his struggles to preserve himself against the chaos of his home as well as his increasing disconnect from his emotions and reality. Zach will be reading from the Season 5 issue tonight.