OCTOBER 8 – 28, 2012
Residency #147
Graphic Novel Residency
Application Deadline: May 18, 2012

MEGAN KELSO, cartoonist

Megan Kelso (b.1968, Seattle, WA) is one of the first cartoonists to make comics that stem from a literary tradition. The Onion’s AV Club has said, “Kelso’s work radiates a warmth, poetry, sympathy, and simultaneously an earthy and otherworldly essence that few comics creators have brought to the table with such quiet confidence and grace.”  After dropping out of art school in 1987, she completed her BA at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. There, she studied history and political science. Inspired by the explosion of ‘zines, bands, and DIY art projects going on in Olympia at the time, she also started self-publishing the influential Riot grrl minicomic “Girlhero.” After graduating, she moved back to Seattle and began to meet other cartoonists. Between 1993 and 1997, she self-published 6 issues of “Girlhero”  with the help of a self-publishing grant from the Xeric Foundation. In 1998, Highwater Books collected the best work from the “Girlhero” comics in a book called “Queen of the Black Black.” Highwater Books and the artists orbiting it, including Kelso, published some of the best and most influential art and literary comics of the oughts. In 2002, Kelso won two Ignatz awards for the early minicomic chapters of her graphic novel “Artichoke Tales.” She continued to work on short stories and contributed to Jordan Crane’s pioneering comics anthology “Non #5.”  Fantagraphics Books published her second book,“The Squirrel Mother” in 2006, a month after the birth of her daughter Virginia. In 2007, she was chosen by The New York Times Magazine to serialize a comic in their weekly Funny Pages feature. "Watergate Sue" ran for six months. After working on it off and on for ten years, “Artichoke Tales” was published by Fantagraphics in 2010.  Kelso is currently working on short stories including an excerpt from George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” for an anthology called "The Graphic Canon" and she is also at work expanding “Watergate Sue” into a graphic novel.

For more information on Megan Kelso, please visit www.girlhero.com

Residency Statement
I think comics as a medium of expression has the narrative power to equal or surpass anything achieved in literature or cinema, but in many ways, its full potential has yet to be realized. I think one of the things holding comics back as a medium is a dearth of good writers choosing to work in this form. Comics tend to privilege the image over writing, even though both are critical to and inseparable from the form. Although I grew up both drawing and writing, I came to comics through writing, and my ideas for comics still arrive mostly through words. Even though I’ve been making comics for 20 years, I still sometimes experience a fear of drawing. Perhaps the fear happens because the process of drawing can be primal, difficult to control and sometimes uncomfortably revealing. It is, I think, a perplexing but common experience for those who have facility with words. But I also think that if a creative person can write well, they already know how to think sequentially with images – hence - they have the ability to make comics. Writing and drawing: it is all just lines on paper.

I am looking for the following kinds of people to join me at ACA: excellent storytellers, journalists, novelists, academics, thinkers and lovers of comics who have established themselves primarily as writers, but who long to draw or who secretly draw already, but are reluctant or unsure of how to put it all together in comics. I think the best comics are the ones that come from a single mind; somebody who can write AND draw; I think if you can write well, and you want to make comics, you can learn to draw in a way that will serve and enhance your words. I also welcome experienced cartoonists who want to re-examine their relationship with writing and drawing.

In this residency, we will throw ourselves into the world of lines on paper. We will work hard to answer the mysterious question of how words and pictures work together in comics, and explore the chemistry of this hybrid form. For this residency, you don’t have to have drawing expertise, but you must be a strong writer, and you must be ready to pursue drawing seriously.

We will study the work of amazing artists who in common parlance, “can’t draw” and explore the rich history of minimalism in comics. We will draw and write ourselves silly, and work to build a collegial atmosphere that lends itself to exploring and risk taking. Please come with a piece of writing that you think could become a comic. We will also create and bring some short projects to completion during the residency. This will include filling up an entire sketchbook with drawings on a theme or subject of your choosing.

Application Requirements

• A CV (listing all jobs and professional experience, not just writing or art related)
• A short biography
• A short statement of purpose; talk about your work and why you want to do this residency
• Two writing samples (should be essentially narrative in nature, whether it is a story, essay, poem, reportage or non-fiction narrative)
• Examples of your drawing. If you have finished comics, you may send those, but finished comics are not required. Doodles or sketchbook drawings are fine, but you must include examples of drawings from life and made up drawings.

FULL Scholarships to attend FREE are available for painters and sculptors (through The Joan Mitchell Foundation) and composers (through The Sally Mead Hands Foundation) for ALL accepted artists who submit ACA Financial Aid forms upon acceptance. Limited additional Financial Aid is available for writers through The Pabst Charitable Foundation for the Arts and the Atlantic Center for the Arts Advance an Artist Program.