By Amanda Moses
In the spring, the U.S. Book Show built buzz around books with its third annual hybrid event, which was hosted inside of NYU’s Kimmel Center in Greenwich Village. During the four-day virtual and in-person showcase, Publishers Weekly presented in-depth conversations with top-tier authors sharing their latest work to be released in the Fall of 2023.
On May 23rd, a group of children’s comic and graphic novel authors gathered to discuss their upcoming work, their inspiration behind these new titles, and their creative process. Moderated by Stephanie Anderson, the Assistant Director of Selection at BookOps, this panel of keynote speakers included Ryan Estrada, Pedro Martin, Sharee Miller, and George O’Conner.
Last month, Estrada’s graphic novel, Occulted, which is co-written by Amy Rose and illustrated by Jeongmin Lee is based on a true-life experience. When co-author Rose was a little girl, she grew up in a cult in San Diego, California and was forbidden to go to school and visit a library because their leader stated that there was no use in learning when the world was going to end. To break free from the brainwashing rhetoric, Rose would sneak off into a boarded-up library where she taught herself history, science and overall, the true facts of life. This enabled her to break free. The story takes this horrifying experience and utilizes it to show one survivor’s journey.
“Our friend Amy Rose suddenly told us a story that she’d never told anyone before, which is that she grew up in a cult just down the road from Heaven’s Gate—it was all set up in a hollowed-out strip mall, but they turned it to a compound,” Estrada said.
Martin shared with audience members that his book, Mexikid, which started as an online series, chronicles his life growing up as a Mexican American. Mexikid will hit bookshelves in August.
“This is a story about the time my family of 11 who climbed into a slightly used 1972 Winnebago Chieftain, a pickup truck with seatbelts that were made out of ropes, to drive 2,000 miles down to Mexico to pick up my grandfather who was reportedly in the Mexican Revolution,” Martin began, “So this story is basically kind of like a comedy drama, historical adventure road trip. That kind of helped me and saw me through coming together with my heritage and trying to understand this very old stern mystery man that was going to be coming into our lives.”
While Estrada and Martin’s pieces were graphic memoirs, Miller’s iteration is a series and is more of a lighthearted story inspired by her experiences in middle school. Miller’s book is called Curlfriends: New in Town, and is set to release in October.
“So, the first book is about Charlie, who has moved around a lot because her dad is in the military, but he’s retiring just in time for her to start her first day of middle school. Sadly, a few days late. So she’s starting in the middle of middle school where everyone’s already formed their friends, and they’re already grouped up but she has a plan to stand out and make friends but, things don’t really go as planned for her. Luckily, she runs into new girlfriends, a really fun group of these three other black girls who welcome her, but she still keeps getting in her own way because she has her own ideas of what a cool girl is,” Miller said.
The last speaker, O’Conner discussed his passion for mythology including the Greek and Nordic Gods. His book, Asgardians: Odin will be released early next year.
“Now everyone else has very personal stories and mine may not seem like it is at first because it’s a retelling of Norse mythology. But, in my previous series Olympians it’s very much a story of how I grew as a person. When I was a little kid, I was the kid who sat back in class drawing pictures all the time, and I was learning Greek mythology in the third grade. That was the first thing that really clicked with me and gave me a focus in school,” O’Conner said.
Photo by Amanda Moses
