Just like all your friends with babies, I've dropped off the face of the earth.  Don't worry about me - we're fine, the baby is perfect and yes, I am getting some sleep, thanks.  So I am starting to think about those other kinds of creations now - the ones I've got control over: comics!

We're coming up on an exciting week for comics in Pittsburgh -  PIX: The Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo is next Saturday, April 2nd.  I am super excited to read comics at the Pre-PIX Reading with some of my favorite cartoonists on Friday, April 1st, and the main event has the best line up yet - including Bill Griffith & Kaz!

I am looking forward to sharing the first postpartum installment of Nonpartum my series for Mutha Magazine with you soon.  I'm also thrilled that Spontaneous, Inevitable, Habitual has been accepted for the Society of Illustrators 2016 Comic Art Annual! 

None of the comics I drew in the 1990s were autobiographical.  When people wrote me letters (real letters - to a P.O. Box!) many of them assumed that my comics were completely autobiographical.  One reader asked "How much of these stories come from your own life?...I guess you must be an 11 year old-grandma-newlywed on maternity leave!"  I take that autobio-assumption for what it is: a compliment, but I think it also says something about comics and the way we read them with such trust.  When you read a comic, you are complicit in making it happen - it feels true.

I've only written a couple of completely autobiographical stories, and I find the responsibility confining.  In my non-comics time, I am a librarian.  That means that I have tsk tsked my way through anti-plagiarism presentations, discretely explained the difference between fiction and non-fiction to all kinds of people, untangled mangled citations, and identified valid information more often than most people.  I am obsessed with proof and documentation, and even more obsessed with the limits of documentation to represent reality.

This has been on my mind while working on my new series Non Partum at Mutha Magazine and reading this discussion at The Comics Journal.  I am honored to have my comics up with some of my favorite cartoonists and nuanced, funny, diverse, intelligent writing on motherhood.  Non Partum is turning out to be the most autobiofictionographical work I've ever done.  I am being very truthful and precise about many things, but I am also mushing some people together, inventing others completely, pretending some things have happened, and not mentioning others that did.  One thing I love about the lies is that they might be what makes the story feel true to you.

I'll be joining Katherine Arnoldi & Russ Fedorka tonight for a panel discussion sponsored by the Pittsburgh Collaborative for Working Class Studies.  The event will be in Room 602 in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh - 6-8PM.  We each use comics to address class, feminism and activism in different ways - it will be a lively and enlightening conversation.  Plus there will be a display of feminist/working class/queer/alternative comics out front!

I imagine that all small press cartoonists entertain similar daydreams.  Being interviewed by Terry Gross - answering the MacArthur "genius grant" phone call - and having work reviewed in The Comics Journal are my top three.  So, I might have passed out for a second when I saw my name in Rob Clough's review of the Dog City # 2 anthology in The Comics Journal this week.

Working with Dog City Press has been so fulfilling and exciting.  Like most people, I love comics, but I've become too lazy to spend time digging in bins, and flipping around online to find the next comic that's going to change my life.  Dog City box sets recognize the need for curation to make small press comics shopping less daunting, while preserving that giddy feeling of discovery when you unearth your next favorite thing.

As an artist, the best part of contributing to Dog City has been seeing my work operating in an environment with other innovative cartoonists.  Rob Clough captures the excitement of unwrapping, flipping through and reorganizing the set.  There's nothing like a review - from someone who reads, thinks and breathes comics - and "gets" what you are trying to do.  I don't expect the other daydreams to come true...ever...so I'm definitely reveling in this with all the Dog City Artists!

I had so much fun presenting comics at the Bonfire Reading Series last month, that I decided to post these three short comics from the event as a slide show here.

I sometimes tell people that I decided to become a cartoonist because I want to be a storyteller, but don't want to do readings!  I've even been working my way away from read-out-loudable comics over the years too - either by using unpronounceable symbols or eliminating words all together.  Of course, I still want you to hear my voice - for real!  If you are in Pittsburgh on Friday, February 21, 2014 - 6:30-9:30 PM, I hope you will come and hear some comics from me at this month's Bonfire Reading Series.  I am so proud to have been invited to read with this group that supports boundary breaking contemporary writers. 

I have a new comix slideshow cycle - Down the Shore - included in the first ever issue of Long Division.  This project was a lot of fun.  Founding Editor, Lareese Hall, asked different kinds of artists to respond to Ed Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations on its 50th anniversary.  The result is a whole new kind of artist's book.

Ruscha's project started me thinking about my home state of New Jersey and New Jersians' odd relationships with cars and driving.  While I was working on this last summer, my favorite boardwalk town, Seaside Heights, burned.  This panel is my little goodbye to the most recent Seaside Heights.  Since it's already survived Snooki and Sandy, I know it will be back in a new form by summertime.