This program was part of our 2021 Winter Read of Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred. The event was held virtually on February 10, 2021.
As part of the Winter Read series, join us for a virtual conversation with Damian Duffy and John Jennings, co-creators of the 2018 graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred. Duffy and Jennings will be in conversation with our Winter Read high intern Cline Dolson and Martha Williams, the Library’s programs and education manager.
Damian Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and a Glyph Comics, Eisner Comics, and Bram Stoker Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist. He holds a MS and PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches courses on computers and culture, and social media and global change. His many publications range from academic essays (in comics form) on new media & learning, to art books about underrepresentation in comics culture, to editorial comics, to a graphic novel adaptation of Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, with his J2D2 Arts counterpart John Jennings. Kindred: A graphic novel adaptation (Abrams ComicArts) was awarded the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel, and the 2018 Eisner Comics Award for Best Adaptation From Another Medium.
John Jennings is an Associate Professor of Art and Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York. His work centers around intersectional narratives regarding identity politics and popular media. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award nominated collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University. Jennings is currently a Nasir Jones Hip Hop Studies Fellow with the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Jennings’ current comics projects include the Hiphop adventure comic Kid Code: Channel Zero, the supernatural crime noir story Blue Hand Mojo, and the graphic novel adaptations of Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Parable of the Sower.
