Archives

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Featured by the New York Times, Newsweek, National Public Radio, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, WWL-TV, The News Hour, Salon.com, Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, the Toronto Star, BoingBoing, and many others!
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a nonfiction graphic novel about a cross-section of seven New Orleans residents and their experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina. Here is Denise, a sixth-generation New Orleanian who will experience the chaos of the Superdome; the Doctor, whose unscathed French Quarter home becomes a refuge for those not so lucky; Abbas and his friend Mansell, who face the storm from the roof of Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor’s son whose young life will remain wildly unsettled well into the future; and Leo, a comic-book fan, and his girlfriend, Michelle, who will lose everything but each other. Starting with their lives before the storm, the book traces how they deal with the hurricane when it hits, and what happens to them afterward, from losing all their possessions, to facing the flooding, to being trapped in the Convention Center, to evacuating and not being able to return home — all told in comics form. Along the way, A.D. reminds the reader of the vitality and spirit of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. A.D. started as a webcomic on SMITH Magazine. Released by Pantheon Graphic Novels in an expanded hardcover edition in 2009, A.D. came out in paperback in August 2010. A.D. was a New York Times bestseller, was nominated for the Eisner and Harvey Awards, and was selected for inclusion in The Best American Comics 2010, edited by Neil Gaiman. It was a YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens selection. In addition, the book was listed on a number of 2009 holiday gift guides, including the New York Times. Vanity Fair magazine declared A.D. to be one of its five “better-than-a-sweater” gift suggestions. And MTV’s “Splash Page” blog called A.D. the best nonfiction comic of 2009. A.D. has been translated into French and Dutch.

A.D. Academic Resources:

“Common Read” selection at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, St. Edward’s University, Washington State University—Vancouver, SUNY Brockport, Bunker Hill Community College, Oklahoma City University, Ben Davis High School
A.D. has been used for high school and college courses, and comes with a free teacher’s guide. Josh Neufeld also presented A.D. as part of a number of university “Common Read” programs. A professor recently wrote,
“The students, most of them first-years, dug so many of the decisions you made. For instance, having an introductory page about Katrina and the brief intros to the characters before the story begins — that helped them get hooked by the story. As did effacing your role until the ‘Diaspora’ section. I also went around the room asking about favorite characters and got almost the full range . . .”

Praise for A.D.:

“[A.D. is] one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published. An essential addition to the ongoing conversation about what Katrina means, and what New Orleans means.” —Dave Eggers

“[A.D.] is the people’s history of Katrina…. [It] is a work … of literature, of high art, and of reverence for nature and humanity.” — Los Angeles Times

“A.D.’s … stunning panels … retell the harrowing experience of what it was like to live through the disaster.” — Rolling Stone

Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose

Flashed

Sudden Stories in Comics & Prose

EDITORS: JOSH NEUFELD & SARI WILSON

WHAT IS FLASHED?

Flashed is a collection of flash fiction stories in comics and prose, pressed up against one another. In dialogue. In concert. In conversation. The stories are arranged in “triplets”—each grouping a kind of call-and-response among the respective contributors. So Flashed is more than an anthology; it’s a conversation—among some of today’s most exciting prose writers and cartoonists—and between the forms of prose and comics.

Flashed is the result of a two-year project in which editors Josh Neufeld and Sari Wilson recruited writers and cartoonists to respond to one another’s work with original pieces of flash fiction. Why flash fiction? It’s the perfect form for a project that’s all about pushing boundaries and cross-fertilizing creative communities. (For the purposes of this project, we defined “flash fiction” as a maximum of 1,000 words and “flash comics” as no more than four pages.)

Contributors:

CARTOONISTS

  • Jessica Abel
  • Lynda Barry
  • Gabrielle Bell
  • Nick Bertozzi
  • Brian Biggs
  • Eli Bishop
  • Box Brown
  • Jennifer Camper
  • Dean Haspiel
  • Tom Kaczynski
  • David Lasky
  • Carol Lay
  • Brendan Leach
  • Jon Lewis
  • Jason Little
  • Matt Madden
  • Ken Nash
  • John Porcellino
  • Joan Reilly
  • Alexander Rothman
  • Andrea Tsurumi
  • d.w.

WRITERS

  • Steve Almond
  • Matthew Baker
  • Aimee Bender
  • Jedediah Berry
  • Rachel Cantor
  • Junot Díaz
  • Julia Fierro
  • Sherrie Flick
  • Gina Frangello
  • V.V. Ganeshananthan
  • Alan Gilbert
  • Myla Goldberg
  • Ben Greenman
  • Sheila Heti
  • Michael Hinken
  • Travis Holland
  • Joy Katz
  • Tara L. Masih
  • Anna North
  • Pamela Painter
  • Anthony Tognazzini
  • Rob Walker
  • Kellie Wells
  • Zoe Zolbrod

More info here.

The Influencing Machine

Featured by the New Yorker, Newsweek, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, the Miami Herald, the Atlantic, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, Publishers Weekly, the Library Journal, BoingBoing, and many others! NOW AVAILABLE IN A 10th-ANNIVERSARY EDITION, UPDATED AND WITH A NEW AFTERWORD.

The Influencing Machine is a collaboration with journalist Brooke Gladstone, co-host of the syndicated weekly radio show On the Media (produced by WNYC and distributed by NPR). Publisher W.W. Norton calls The Influencing Machine, “a visionary and opinionated work of graphic nonfiction on the media and its discontents. It debunks the notion that ‘The Media’ is an external force, outside of our control, equipping us to be savvy consumers and shapers of the news.”

The new edition brings the story up to date, striving to reckon with the impact of Donald Trump — without having him hijack the narrative. The book features changes to text and art, touching on the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, and includes a new afterword that addresses the rise of social media, and the public’s responsibility in a time of division and disinformation.

The Associated Press wrote of The Influencing Machine, “what makes the book so notable is its style. It’s presented almost entirely in drawings, like a textbook in comic-book or graphic-novel form. . . . It’s easy to imagine The Influencing Machine becoming mandatory reading in journalism classes around the country.”

Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal both declared The Influencing Machine to be one of the best comics/graphic novels of 2011. In addition, The Influencing Machine has been listed on a number of 2011 holiday gift guides, including New York Magazine and BoingBoing. It was selected for 1book140, The Atlantic.com’s Reading Club.

In addition, the book was a “Common Read” selection at the University of Maryland, Wichita State University, and Johnson County Community College, among others.

Samples and excerpts:

Since its publication, The Influencing Machine has been translated into French, Italian, German, and Korean.

Praise for The Influencing Machine:

“This is a comic book with zest and brains — and it just might help a reader understand the brave new world.”
— The New Yorker
“. . . What makes the book so notable is its style. It’s presented almost entirely in drawings, like a textbook in comic-book or graphic-novel form. . . . It’s easy to imagine The Influencing Machine becoming mandatory reading in journalism classes around the country.”
— Associated Press
“. . . mind-opening, thought-provoking, and incredibly timely. . . . [A]n absolutely spectacular read: serious without being weighty, accessible without being thin. It’s one of those graphic nonfiction volumes, like Understanding Comics, that shows just how well suited comics are to explaining and exploring serious subjects.”
— BoingBoing
“The Influencing Machine is so remarkable that it is hard to describe. The best I can do is: it’s a book about the history and current controversies of the media, all done as a Spiegelman-style comic-strip narrative. Brooke herself (or at least an avatar) leads you through it all, and her ‘voice’ — well known after her years as host of NPR’s On the Media — comes through loud and clear, thanks to Josh Neufeld’s witty drawings. I learned a lot, including a lot that I should have known already, and enjoyed every minute.”
— Michael Kinsley
“. . . Often brilliant and always thought-provoking. . . . [T]he main reason the book flows so well and delivers its ideas so efficiently is related to Neufeld’s contributions. Avoiding the easy laughs achieved by outlandish caricatures of historical figures, Neufeld likewise achieves an approach to storytelling that’s always smart but never descends into mere (and annoying) cleverness. Employing an understated style that doesn’t try to draw attention to itself but instead always works in concert with his collaborator’s prose, he helps create what is a truly multimodal text with the artwork working on a parallel, if clearly complementary, track to the print. . . . At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s also Neufeld’s engaging visual explication of its ideas that make the book so accessible to what is potentially a wide range of audiences.”
— Graphic Novel Reporter
“A first-rate comics manifesto. The Influencing Machine has influenced me to think much more deeply about the media landscape we live in. Gladstone and Neufeld can show and tell with the best of ’em.”
— Scott McCloud
“. . . A rollicking and rambling tour of the historical role of the media and its relationship to people and politics. . . . [Begs] second and third readings to absorb and enjoy all the information and droll asides.”
— Miami Herald
“Gladstone . . . and noted illustrator Neufeld . . . make a formidable pair in this fascinating history of media’s influence.”
— Publishers Weekly
“It’s the kind of graphic novel that demands repeated readings and dog-eared pages of relevant facts. It’s the kind of book that should be in the hands of every high school student as a primer in the way minds and citizenry function in the free-for-all called American-style democracy, and how that ties in with the vast march of human perception.”
— North Adams Transcript
“The Influencing Machine is more than graphic nonfiction. It’s a media studies course in itself.”
— Cartoon Movement
“. . . This analysis of contemporary journalism is as incisive as it is entertaining, while offering a lesson on good citizenship through savvy media consumption.”
— Kirkus (Starred Review)