#36 Hello, DC, and happy pride!

DC book event & comics classes this summer

Y’all, it is wild to have my book out in the world. I keep seeing it just casually sitting on a shelf, like nbd. And friends text pictures when they spot it. Here’s a recent “where’s waldo” book edition:

Apparently this is the face I make when I see my book baby in the wild—it’s the same face I made with my kid during their first year or so of life—pure wonder & delight!

Book Event: Little District Books in DC

To kick off Pride this year, I’m doing a reading at Little District Books in DC tonight—Thursday June 5 at 7pm. The event is ASL interpreted by Kelsey Mitchell & Folami Ford. I’d love to see you and chat about making graphic memoir, Pride and undeserved shame, and the creative process. Please come!

I’m diving into making new work this summer—braided comic essays. Huh? you might be thinking. My favorite written example of a braided essay, sometimes also called a hermit crab essay, is CJ Hauser’s The Crane Wife. Here’s a tiny taste of what braided comic essays are looking like for me:

Draw with me! Comics classes this summer

No drawing experience needed—just curiosity & a tiny bit of bravery.

I hope you’ll join me in making some braided comic essays—we’ll be doing that in one of the classes I’m teaching this summer—Making Comics When the World is on Fire—a 3-week class about drawing comics through joy, pain, and the mundane. I’m also offering 2 workshops and 1-to-editing. How to Start is a workshop about getting unstuck in your creative practice.

Telling Hard Stories: Ask-Me-Anything workshop builds on a recent talk I gave for Sequential Artist Workshop.

Both How to Start and Telling Hard Stories happen next week! A former student describes my class as:

“It's like sharing your diary and weird dreams with a group of strangers who are sharing their diaries and weird dreams too and you're drawing yourselves as animals some of the time and there are imaginary creatures and none of this is recorded except in your notebook and it's a safe and warm and welcoming space and somehow fabulous and just the right amount of scary and you’ll discover things you didn't know about yourself and you’ll start paying attention to your days in a different way.

It's the class you didn't know you needed.

Your future self will thank you for signing up.”

More info: https://www.caragormally.com/comicsclass

Sign up here: https://forms.gle/5vmHptrctkS1Lg367

And if cost is an issue—please reach out, I have a few sliding scale spots open for class! Former students—ask about a discount—I’d love to draw together again.

Thanks for reading Soft Things: comics about science, research, and being human. I create narrative comics that intertwine research and storytelling to make science relatable. My comics have been featured in the Washington Post and Mutha Magazine, among other outlets. My graphic memoir, Everything is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder—terrible life advice that I do not co-sign!—is available from your local bookstore and elsewhere. If you’re new here, welcome! You might wonder why I’m curious about shame, why this newsletter is called Soft Things, and who the heck I am, anyway. For more comics, check out my Instagram @cara_gormally and website.