Spring 2019

Material Comix Workshop

Wednesday February 13 – Friday February 15
5:30-8:30 p.m.
WSU-Pullman Campus, Bundy Reading Room, Avery Hall

Inspired by the counter-cultural and DIY roots of comics and zine-making, Mita Mahato, comix artist and poet, will guide students through a series of creative exercises involving collage, collaboration, and story-building. Focusing on the idea of materiality, the class will craft a number of comics forms while reflecting upon the materials that go into making comics, the materiality or substance of the comics page, and the personal or political materials that comics writers and artists take up as their subjects. No drawing experience is required. To enroll, contact Leisa McCormick (lmccormick@wsu.edu) in Avery Hall 202.

Poetry Comix Presentation, Mita Mahato

Thursday, February 14
3:00-4:00 p.m. Reception to follow.
WSU-Pullman Campus, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Mita Mahato is a cut paper, comics, and collage artist whose work explores loss by engaging the transformative capacities of found and handmade papers. A selection of her poetry comics, collectively titled In Between, was published by Pleiades Press in 2017. Her book Sea was recognized by Cartoonists NW as 2015’s “best comic book,” and her comics art has been exhibited in galleries across the country. In 2017, she served as the first Artist-in-Residence at the School of Medicine at UC Riverside. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, serves on the board for the arts organization Short Run Seattle as well as the steering committee for Graphic Medicine, and is a teaching artist with the Henry Art Gallery.

Mita Mahato’s visit is co-sponsored by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, and the Common Reading Program.

Fiction Reading, Crystal Wilkinson

April 4
WSU-Pullman Campus

Crystal Wilkinson is a fiction writer whose 2016 novel The Birds of Opulence was the winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Blackberries, Blackberries was a winner of the 2002 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, and Water Street was a finalist for both the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She is also the winner of the Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She currently teaches in and directs the BFA in Creative Writing Program at Morehead State University.