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MK Czerwiec’s critically acclaimed graphic novels join Graphic Mundi

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Menopause

Graphic Mundi, the recently launched graphic novel imprint of Penn State University Press, is the new home for Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 and Menopause: A Comic Treatment, both by Graphic Medicine luminary MK Czerwiec. The Graphic Mundi edition of Taking Turns, with a new cover and updated foreword by Czerwiec, and the new edition of the Eisner-winning anthology Menopause will both be released in November. Both titles will be distributed exclusively by Diamond Comic Distributors.

Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, originally published as part of Penn State University Press’s Graphic Medicine series in 2017, is a firsthand account of caregiving in Illinois Masonic Medical Center’s HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in the 1990s—a pivotal time in the history of AIDS. It received rave reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, The Advocate, and other publications and was cited by Rebecca Makkai as source material for The Great Believers, her award-winning novel. Menopause: A Comic Treatment, published in 2020, was awarded the 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Anthology, and Mimi Pond’s “When the Menopausal Carnival Comes to Town,” one of the comics contained in the anthology, was awarded Best Short Story. It was also named a Best Graphic Novel of 2020 by the New York Times, whose columnist Hillary Chute called it “eclectic and often humorous,” and listed among the 2020 Top Ten Best Graphic Novels for Adults by Booklist.

Additional Fall 2021 releases from Graphic Mundi are Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé (November); A Chance by Cristina Durán and Miguel Giner Bou (November); Iranian Love Stories by Jane Deuxard and Deloupy (December); and BrainComix by Jean-François Marmion and Monsieur B (December).

Graphic Medicine Heads to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival

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Three authors of books in Penn State University Press’s critically acclaimed Graphic Medicine series are participating in the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this May.

Graphic novelist, printmaker, and textile artist Gareth Brookes will exhibit advance copies of his forthcoming graphic novel A Thousand Coloured Castles. Rendered entirely in unique scratched-off crayon drawings, the book depicts life with Charles Bonnet syndrome, which causes intense hallucinations in people with pre-existing vision problems. Brookes’s previous graphic novel, The Black Project, won the 2013 Best Original Graphic Novel Award from Broken Frontier.

MK Czerwiec is a nurse who uses comics to contemplate the complexities of illness and caregiving. She is co-curator of GraphicMedicine.org, co-author of the Eisner-nominated Graphic Medicine Manifesto, and artist-in-residence at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Her newly released graphic memoir Taking Turns tells the story of HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, where she worked in the mid-1990s at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Ian Williams—recently named the “guru of Graphic Medicine” by the Canadian Medical Association Journal—is a visual artist and illustrator, a medical doctor, and an independent scholar of the humanities. He founded the website GraphicMedicine.org and is co-editor of the Graphic Medicine series and co-author of the Eisner-nominated Graphic Medicine Manifesto. His graphic novel The Bad Doctor is a darkly humorous look at the practice of medicine through the eyes of a neurotic doctor weighed down by his responsibilities.

Czerwiec and Williams will present on Graphic Medicine in a TCAF session on the 13th at 4pm in the Summerhill Ballroom, Marriot Bloor-Yorkville.

Graphic Medicine, a subgenre of graphic novel that is growing in popularity and professional recognition, refers to work that uses comics to tell nuanced stories about health, illness, and the medical field. Learn more at GraphicMedicine.org; see the full list of series titles at PSUPress.org.