Ben Katchor, the first cartoonist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship grant, is also a writer, teacher, and performer of TED Talk recitations.  His familiar-seeming yet skewed urban vignettes, such as Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer and The Cardboard Valise, have been appearing in magazines and alternative newspapers for over a quarter century.  More recently, he's been collaborating with musician Mark Mulcahy on an absurdist musical play, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, and a comic-book opera, The Carbon Copy Building, both of which won Obie Awards.  Seemingly unable to successfully arrive in Portland, Katchor joins host S.W. Conser on the phone from Seattle to discuss his latest book, Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories, a collection of architecture-related comics from Metropolis magazine.

Celebrated Portland comics artists Barry Deutsch and Jenn Manley Lee have been collaborating and inspiring each other since high school.  Their separate projects, Barry's Hereville and Jenn's Dicebox, began as epic web comics but have now been collected and printed in hardcover graphic novel form.  Barry and Jenn sat down at the KBOO studios with host S.W. Conser to discuss how comics are changing our conversations on gender, culture, politics, technology, and mythology.

Nation Institute Senior Fellow Chris Hedges (American Fascists, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) and comics journalist Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde) have teamed up to produce Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a sweeping portrait of the American underclass and the institutions that profit from their misery. Sitting down with West Virginia coal miners; immigrant farmworkers in Florida; Sioux activists at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; elderly residents of Camden, New Jersey; and Wall Street occupiers in New York, Hedges and Sacco bring together wrenching stories of crisis, despair, survival, and hope, the personal histories brought to life with Sacco's painstaking illustrations.

Also featured on today's show: a preview of the upcoming Projects International Art & Comics Fest with organizer Dunja Jankovic.

As part of KBOO's Fall Membership Drive, limited copies of the book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (in hardcover) will be available as thank-you gifts for your $60 pledge of support.

You can join KBOO by clicking here and entering the appropriate code (below).

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt   Nation Books    BK REVOLT

Nation Institute Senior Fellow Chris Hedges (American Fascists, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) and comics journalist Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde) have teamed up to produce Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a sweeping portrait of the American underclass and the institutions that profit from their misery.  Sitting down with West Virginia coal miners; immigrant farmworkers in Florida; Sioux activists at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; elderly residents of Camden, New Jersey; and Wall Street occupiers in New York, Hedges and Sacco bring together wrenching stories of crisis, despair, survival, and hope, the personal histories brought to life with Sacco's painstaking illustrations.

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