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Celebrate 5 Years of Dissident Publishing with Street Noise at the NYPL!

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Street Noise Books 5 Years of Dissident Publishing New York Public Library

Join Street Noise Books this Friday, December 12 at 6pm! Dissidence and activism are core foundations of Street Noise Book’s graphic novel publishing program. Dedicated to raising up the stories and voices of BIPOC, queer, neurodivergent, and disabled people, the publisher celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. Street Noise Books is celebrating its 5-year anniversary with a panel featuring some of its top creators! 

This event will take place in person at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, 455 Fifth Avenue, NYC in room 7C on the 7th Floor.

This roundtable with Street Noise publisher Liz Frances and authors Makee (Call Me Emma), Jesse Mechanic (The Last Time We Spoke), Bishakh Som (Spellbound), and Tracy White (Unaccompanied) with Badiucao and Melissa Chan (You Must Take Part in Revolution) joining remotely from Australia and Berlin, and Mohammad Sabaaneh (Power Born of Dreams and Eyes on Gaza) joining remotely from the West Bank, will feature a discussion on what it means to be an activist publisher and author today — and how we all work to change the world for the better on local and global fronts. 

There will be books and stickers and buttons given away.

Exclusive Preview: The Last Time We Spoke

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The Last Time We Spoke by Jesse Mechanic and Street Noise Books is an emotional and heartbreaking memoir of the author’s lifelong struggle with his mother’s death from cancer.

Grief never goes away.

When he was a teenager, Jesse Mechanic’s mother passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In this memoir, he looks back on that time, and on the ways that experience followed him throughout his life. Struggling with school while dealing with attentional problems and the overwhelming tsunami of grief, this book tells the story of Mechanic’s slow work to figure out a life for himself. It’s about obsessive-compulsive disorder, intrusive thoughts, and depression—straight-A’s turning to straight F’s, and smiles to blank stares. It’s about what loss can teach us, and how trauma can be both debilitating and beautiful. It’s about standing in dark rooms for long enough for your eyes to adjust.

And graffiti. It’s about that too.

With powerful visuals and thoughtful, poignant text, this graphic memoir challenges readers to keep going in the face of the hardest times.

Jesse Mechanic is an opinion columnist, essayist, and artist. He has published work in Mother Jones, In These Times, HuffPost, Truthout, and other publications. Jesse enjoys woodworking, the television show Cheers, and working diligently to dismantle the various oppressive systems that define our world. The Last Time We Spoke is his debut graphic novel.

Purchase: Bookshop – Amazon

The Last Time We Spoke