MoCCAfest Silver Medal to Greek Diary

I'm very honored to have received the silver medal for long form comics for Greek Diary at MoCCAfest in New York.  Penelope Bagieu's book California Dreamin' won the gold--it was a dream to meet her and to read her book on the plane home.  This book made me feel like I was carrying the wild sprit of ambitious and joyful comics home with me.  R Sikoryak's brilliant Terms and Conditions won the other Silver in long form.  On the jury for this award were Rutu Modan, Maelle Doliveux, Nick Bertozzi, Joan Hilty, and Josh O'Neill--each of them produces work that I admire.  Jason Little and Lauren Weinstein were also involved--how I love them!  (Lauren wasn't there because she has a new baby.)

Most enjoyable this weekend was to be behind a table with Jennifer Hayden and Summer Pierre. Ellen Lindner and Alissa Harris were right next door.  (On the other side was Fantagraphics). The work and the company of these women give me energy and crack me up. With Ellen, I'm co-editing the Strumpet 5, transatlantic anthology of comics by women, coming out this fall.  

I printed 30 copies of Greek Diary.  A few are available in my shop, and then they will be available through Birdcage Bottom Distro.   

Vive this comics community!

PS  I won a MoCCAfest award last year too, but for a completely different project, AlleEgo (Other Self), also a biographical story that takes place in Greece, but 20 years earlier, and is fictionalized, not diary comics, and a larger format with a greyscale wash.

Happy Holidays!

The last few days I've taken a break from digitally editing my Greek Diary to make the watercolors of Egyptian and Minoan patterns.  Working out the patterns on graph paper and painting in watercolor are a vacation in themselves.  Happy holidays to all!

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New to Patreon!

I've just created a Patreon account in order to post my Greek Diary project!   Every week I will post pages from diary comics I kept in Greece:  part about working as illustrator on an excavation, part about traveling to islands with my family.   I will post pages I drew while traveling and continue to create new pages that add context and memories of my first and many subsequent trips to Greece over nearly 20 years, especially Santorini, the site of the beginning of the romance with John 13 years ago.  This book is currently around 160 pages. I plan to add to this number over the next months.

This project feeds Alle Ego, another book (in progress) about friendship and romance on my first trip to Greece as a grad student.