From May 16-19 2019, New York City's School of Visual Arts hosted the Queers & Comics Conference, a biennial LGBTQ cartoonist conference. The event was organized by Jennifer Camper and Justin Hall and provided a space for artists, writers and fans to discuss everything from publishing to story structure to social justice to different kinds of pens. Bay Area artist Elizabeth Beier attended the event and created visual notes of some of the panels.
In today's installment, Elizabeth recounts the Non-Fiction Comics & Comics Journalism Panel, featuring MK Czerwiec (moderator), Rosa Colón, Martina Schradi, Alison Wilgus, and Elvis Wolf discussing comics based on true stories. While they all have very different subject matter, ranging from health and care-taking to aviation to women's bookstores to queer immigrants to Puerto Rico, they had some common concerns. These included the importance of research and learning as one goes, the struggle to be timely when long-form researched work takes time to create, and the tension between explaining or telling a true story vs advocating for a point of view.
