 I was very surprised, but also very honored, that my graphic novel Hereville has been nominated for the 2010 “Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.”
The Andre Norton award is given out annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America for an outstanding work of fiction for young people. It’s given out as part of the Nebula Awards. (When the nice lady from the Nebula committee called me, she said this is “essentially the Nebula Award for young adult books”).
My competition this year includes many VERY big names — Paolo Bacigalupi, Suzanne Collins, Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, Pearl North, Megan Whalen Turner, and — sheesh! — even Terry Pratchett! It is an amazing honor to be nominated in such company. My thanks to every science fiction and fantasy writer out there who voted for Hereville.
My congratulations as well to my friend (and someone who strongly influenced Hereville) Rachel Swirsky. Her novella ‘‘The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window’’ is nominated for this year’s “best novella” Nebula Award. “The Lady Who Plucked…” is an incredible story, and I would have been shocked if it weren’t nominated.
On February 14, 2011 · Comments Off on Interviewed by Laurel Snyder!
The children’s book writer and general source of awesomeness Laurel Snyder interviewed me on her blog. Here’s a sample of the interview:
Laurel: Do you think books can change the world?
Barry: Definitely, but only the way a conversation can change the world, or a speech, or a TV show. Everything we do changes the world somehow, but usually the changes are very tiny. So to make a big change you need thousands of people (and thousands of books), all pushing to change the world in some direction. A good example is, are there going to be some engaging and interesting Jewish girl characters in kids books? If just one or two books do that, the answer is “no,” but if a whole bunch of us do it, the answer becomes “yes,” and that will make a small but consequential difference in the lives of a lot of Jewish girl readers who want to see themselves reflected in books.
Please go check it out.
On February 9, 2011 · Comments Off on Sketches of Fat Guys for Fat People Art Week
It’s Fat People Art Week! A few contributions….
I’m trying to learn how to paint in Photoshop, and I was playing with some more painterly approaches in the drawing below (although I still didn’t give up the crutch of line art!). Still a long way to go…
And here’s the exact same drawing, except I took the colors and just smudged the heck out of them:
Another fat guy drawing, this one finished in my more typical style:
And a third, this time playing around with cross-hatching:
On January 30, 2011 · Comments Off on Read “Modest Medusa”
Jake Richmond, the cartoonist who (among a zillion other things) colors “Hereville,” has started a new webcomic, called “Modest Medusa,” which is genuinely funny, charming and nice to look at. The first strip is here, but I’ll post a sample:
Go check it out!
Steven Bergson of the Jewish Comics Blog has published an interview with me. Steven, who has been incredibly supportive of Hereville, really did his research, and asked smart questions that no one else has thought to ask me.
Here’s a sample, but you’ll have to go to Steven’s site to read the whole thing:
SMB: Thus far, the only Jews we’ve encountered in Hereville have been Hasidic Jews like Mirka and her family. Do other Jewish groups exist in the world of Hereville? Will the reader be made aware of other denominations (e.g. Conservative or Reform) or are they considered totally irrelevant in Mirka’s community?
BD: All sorts of Jews exist in the world of Hereville, but they don’t live in the town, and they are pretty irrelevant to Mirka’s community. But there are non-Hasidic Jews who visit town every now and then. For instance, Rochel, Mirka’s stepsister, has a father who comes by a couple of times a year, and he’s Jewish but not Hasidic.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he also gathered links to what appears to be every single interview with me available on the web, and published them below the interview! He even found the old interview that Erika Moen conducted with me, before the book version of Hereville was even published.
Thanks, Steven!
On January 20, 2011 · Comments Off on Brigid Alverson Interviewed In The Comics Reporter
There’s been no greater booster of Hereville than comics journalist Brigid Alverson, who is interviewed here by Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter. Brigid — who has interviewed me more than once, and who I like a lot — was nice enough to mention Hereville:
SPURGEON: Can you talk for a bit about one or two of the comics you thought were great this year? What makes a comic great as opposed to merely good? Is there something that tends to connect great works in comics in your mind?
ALVERSON: A great comic crosses over a boundary in my brain so that I’m not just reading it, I’m experiencing it on some deeper level. Hereville was the best example of that, and I feel like a broken record because I talk about it a lot, but it really was the standout comic for me. It has to do with the way that the creator, Barry Deutsch, creates a world and very quickly draws you into it, so you are getting inside the characters’ heads. There’s a scene in there where the main character, who is 11, is solving a math problem, and as I read it, I was solving it in the same way. Many of the sequences were like that. It’s as if I hallucinated this book rather than just reading it.
Wow! Reading that made my day. Thanks, Brigid. (And click through to read the entire interview — she talks about lots of stuff other than Hereville!)
(Information about buying your own copy of Hereville can be found here.)
On January 19, 2011 · Comments Off on Beautiful dance animation
I love this little animation, a collaboration between an animator, a choreographer, and several dancers.
Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.
There’s also a making-of video.
On January 14, 2011 · Comments Off on Barry Intereviewed On “Books We Love”
“Books We Love,” the blog of the Park Ridge Public Library, has posted an interview with me. Here’s a sample:
I love the character of the pig-what made you choose a pig and not some other animal?
In retrospect, it’s silly how long I spent trying to decide on the right animal to be in the Witch’s yard. Wolf? Huge housecat? Giant ferret? But then I thought of pig, and obviously a pig was the perfect antagonist, just because a pig is the iconic “non-kosher” animal that Jews avoid eating. And once I had that, the pig’s grumpy, over-the-top personality fell into place.
Do you have any subjects that you’re dying to write about, but haven’t yet? Any non-Hereville books that you have percolating away in your head?
I have a few non-Hereville ideas. But Hereville is also a very broad canvas — after all, hundreds of people live in the town of Hereville. So I think I could happily do many, many more Hereville books, and be able to fit in a huge range of stories and characters.
I’d be really eager to do a story with a positive, fat character as the protagonist. I was really disappointed when the TV show “Huge” was canceled.
Click through to read the entire interview! And my thanks to Sarah Hagge for doing such a great job conducting the interview. By the way, Sarah also wrote a very nice review of Hereville back in December; you can read that review here.
On January 13, 2011 · Comments Off on The First Hereville Fanfic!
Fanfic writer Jade Lennox has great taste — just look at her list of fandoms, which includes Slings and Arrows (my favorite TV show), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (another favorite of mine), Castle Waiting (a wonderful comic book by Linda Medley which I think most Hereville readers would enjoy), Love and Rockets, Wonderfalls, Farscape, Veronica Mars… I have to admit, by “great taste,” I just mean that she (he?) likes a lot of comics and TV that I like.
Anyway, I was thrilled when Jade Lennox recently wrote “Who Needs A Gallows When You Have A Sword?,” a Hereville short story featuring Mirka, Fruma, Zindel, Rochel, Gittel, and a brand-new character, Fruma’s brother Feter Gedalya. It’s well-written and fun to read, and in some ways it parallels thought I’ve had about Hereville characters (I’ve often thought that Mirka would resist the pressure to dress as Queen Esther!).
By the way, if you find the format or font difficult to read, click on the “Hide Creator’s Style” link near the top of the webpage, towards the right, and that should fix things.
Today is World Fair Use Day, which makes it an especially auspicious day to link to some fanfic. My thanks to Jade Lennox, for writing such a terrific story. And to my friend TeaOtter, who requested a Hereville story.
On January 12, 2011 · Comments Off on Barry Interviewed on “Hey, Women! Comics!” (And why having good female characters matters.)
The blog “Hey, Women! Comics!” has posted an interview with me.
Here’s a bit from the interview; there’s more at the link.
HWC: What sort of woman do you think Hereville best appeals to?
BD: I’m not sure! I’ve noticed that most of Hereville’s reviewers are female, though, so there must be some appeal there.
I intended Hereville to be a feminist book – not in the sense of being over-the-top or preachy, but int he sense of writing a book with a kick-ass but not perfect female protagonist, and with a lot of female characters who actually matter to the story (especially Mirka’s not-at-all-evil stepmother, Fruma.) I often read books to my two honorary nieces, Sydney and Maddox, and they’re always very aware of if a book has girl characters they can relate to or not; without any prompting from me, they’re always asking “is this one a girl?” and pointing to the female characters and saying “I’m her!” So I think it’s important.
I think any reader who likes fun, character-based fantasy stories could enjoy Hereville.
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