Van Cook will read from and discuss her original graphic autobiography The Late Child and Other Animals, accompanied by a slide show of images from the book. The book is written and colored by Van Cook and adapted to the comics form and drawn by artist James Romberger.
A decade after Hetty Martin survives the bombing of Portsmouth by the Nazis in World War II, she gives birth to a child out of wedlock, Marguerite. Now Hetty must go before a tribunal to prove that she is a fit mother. From there, The Late Child and Other Animals tells the story of Marguerite's childhood in the recovering British naval port and the rural beauty of the Isle of Wight and in Normandy, France. The journeys and struggles over decades of this mother and daughter are linked in five episodes that veer between lyricism, wry wit, and harrowing suspense.
Marguerite Van Cook came to New York her punk with band The Innocents, after touring the UK with The Clash. She stayed and opened the seminal installation gallery Ground Zero with her partner James Romberger. Her own works as an artist and filmmaker have placed her in many museum collections.
Her current generational graphic memoir The Late Child and Other Animals with Romberger has been translated and published in France under the title L'Enfant inattendue. Her color work on the graphic memoir 7 Miles a Second, a collaborative project with James Romberger and the late David Wojnarowicz garnered her a nomination for an 2014 Eisner award for Best Painter/Multimedia Artist. Read more at her website.
James Romberger‘s ecological comic Post York was published in 2012 by Uncivilized Books; it includes a flexi-disc by his son Crosby and it was nominated for an 2013 Eisner award for Best Single Issue. Romberger collaborated with Marguerite Van Cook and the late writer, artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz on the critically acclaimed graphic novel 7 Miles A Second, which was first published in 1996 by DC/Vertigo and then released in a revised, expanded edition in February 2013 by Fantagraphics Books. You can read more on his website.
Parsons at the New School
2 West 13th Street
NYC
in the Bark Room (off the lobby)