Three Words
I’ve had a really busy year this year – not only has there been all the moving drama, I’ve also been working on two books. The first is my Katherine Mansfield bio/memoir, which is now going to be published by VUP in 2016, and the second is Three Words, An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women’s Comics.
Three Words is something special. When I first started paying attention to the local comics world around 2010, there didn’t seem to be many women making comics. They weren’t significantly represented in books or anthologies, and they didn’t hang out much with the comics guys. I assumed that comics was something NZ women didn’t really do. But I was wrong.
I got together with Indira Neville and Rae Joyce, two other comics creators, and we set about creating our own anthology. Indira had been involved in the alt music/comics scene since the early nineties, and Rae was also a poet and fiction writer. Over coffee and green tea we sketched out a concept for our book – three words that contributors would exchange to create new strips – and called for submissions of up to three pages of existing work.
The work flooded in, and it’s still coming in even though the book is about to go to print. We’ve got edgy underground work, comics by Māori and Pasifika creators, editorial comics, beautiful art comics, and auto-bio comics. Lots of the talented contributors had never been in print before, and some of them were print veterans.
Of course this kind of book is a modest one, and it relies on people (like you, I hope!) to pre-order it so it can exist. I would love it if you could show your support for NZ women comics creators, and encourage other women to make comics. If you pre-order now you get free shipping in NZ, $5 off the retail price ($50 down to $45) and a free zine thrown in. And you get that sense of well-being that comes with being a patron of the arts!
(And I promise I’m going to start posting some comics soon, once I’ve finished my masters thesis.)
LET ME BE FRANK 