“The art deploys earth tones and figures reminiscent of 1930s animation, and Loewinsohn slightly alters expected panel layouts, with picture book–like two-page spreads, and colors in a blue-tinged past against brown, fertile present scenes. It’s delicate, taciturn almost, in her impressive restraint and use of images to grapple with emotions.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Briana will be discussing her beautiful debut, Ephemera: A Memoir, with Thien Pham, whose forthcoming book Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam is out in June.
About the book: Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warm, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn’s debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.
