September 11, 2014
Object and Subject: The Illustrated Book
Lincoln Mitchel, Quintan Ana Wikswo, John Dermot Woods & Brad Zeller
April 8 – 11, 2015
AWP 2015 Conference and Bookfair
Minneapolis Convention Center &
Hilton Minneapolis Hotel
“Bring back the illustrated book!” the New Yorker pled last year. We aim to comply. Three writers of illustrated novels and story collections examine the hows and whys of illustration versus graphic novel or comic, and the place of pictures in literary fiction. What does a picture add? How does it shape a narrative? Abstraction versus representation, photo versus drawing, and text versus image all ask the same question—how can we best tell this particular story?
The illustrated novel has a long, if too-often forgotten history in letters—Dickens, Twain and others all employed images in their work, but we rarely think of those as illustrated novels. But the popularity of the graphic novel has also propelled the illustration back into contemporary narrative. Whether created in collaboration with visual artists or as part of a writer’s practice, image can extend, amplify, and bend a text, and deserves to be part of every writer’s arsenal.
Check back for further details.