(If you haven’t seen it yet, part one can be found here.)
Anyway, without further ado, here’s the second installment: Continue reading Kameoka Diaries #2 — Friends
Author Archives: Lars Martinson
Kameoka Diaries #1 — Self-Introduction
Tonoharu: Official Selection at Angoulême Comics Festival!
Cool news! The French version of Tonoharu has been chosen as an official selection for the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest comics festival!
Tonoharu is one of 58 books chosen as an official selection. As I understand it, a few thousand books were eligible, so it’s a pretty big deal and a real honor.
This puts Tonoharu in the running for some of the most prestigious awards in comics. (And no, “prestigious comics award” is not an oxymoron.) Looking over my competition (which includes comics greats like Dan Clowes, Jim Woodring, Craig Thompson, and Joe Sacco, just to name a few) I think its fair to say I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at the top prize, or even the Angoulême International Comics Festival Essentials prize, which is awarded to five books. But I might have a shot at the best newcomer award or something.
Awards will be announced at the festival in late-January. I’ll keep you posted!
My sincere thanks to my French publisher Le Lezard Noir, (in particular Stéphane Duval and Anne Cavarroc) for producing such a beautiful edition of my book!
Angoulême International Comics Festival Official Selection List (in French)
Tonoharu: Official Selection at Angoulême Comics Festival!
Cool news! The French version of Tonoharu has been chosen as an official selection for the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest comics festival!
Tonoharu is one of 58 books chosen as an official selection. As I understand it, a few thousand books were eligible, so it’s a pretty big deal and a real honor.
This puts Tonoharu in the running for some of the most prestigious prizes in comics. (And no, “prestigious comics award” is not an oxymoron!) Looking over my competition (which includes comics greats like Dan Clowes, Jim Woodring, Craig Thompson, and Joe Sacco, just to name a few) I think its fair to say I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at the top prize, or even the Angoulême International Comics Festival Essentials prize, which are awarded to five books. But I might have a shot at the best newcomer award or something.
Awards will be announced at the festival in late-January. I’ll keep you posted!
My sincere thanks to all the people at Le Lezard Noir, (in particular and translator ) for producing such a beautiful edition of my book!
Angoulême International Comics Festival Official Selection List (in French)
Upcoming Appearances in Central Japan
I have two appearances coming up this month in Japan, if anyone’s interested:
On Sunday, December 11, 2011, I’ll be in Nagoya taking part in a panel discussion/release party for Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan, an anthology to benefit Japan disaster relief. The Facebook event page with all the details can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/285808968131016/
Then on Saturday, December 17, 2011, I’ll be at the Tokushima Museum of Literature & Calligraphy ( 徳島県立文学書道館 ). This is in conjunction with a calligraphy show that runs from 12/16 ~ 12/18. Don’t miss your big chance to see a piece of my sub-par calligraphy! I’m not sure what times I’ll be there to and from, but I’ll update with that later.
There doesn’t seem to be an online event page for the show, but the website for the museum can be found here (Japanese only):
http://www.bungakushodo.jp/index.html
Hope to see you there!
Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan
It’s been more than two months since my last update. I don’t know how many regular readers I have, but based on my Google Analytics reports, it’s probably just a couple-few dozen. So to those tens of people,my apologies for not delivering on the weekly updates that are promised on the masthead of this website. What can I say? The full time job has taken a lot out of me, so something had to give. The next couple weeks are super busy so I probably won’t update for a while, but from here on out I’m going to try to update at least once a month (yeesh, talk about a low bar). The end of December should be pretty slow, so I should be able to update more frequently then, for a while at least.
But I digress. What inspired me to get off my butt and update after ten weeks was I wanted to let you all know that Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan, the comics anthology I contributed to, is finally available in paperback. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to relief efforts to the disasters that befell northeast Japan in March of this year. So please consider ordering a copy here:
http://www.biguglyrobot.net/mailorder/
Thanks!!
Kameoka in Brief
Pictured: A two minute walk from my apartment.
To all the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people reading this, sorry this entry is so late in coming. Between moving/settling in/getting sick/trying to prepare for lessons, I just never had the energy to do much of anything other than what was strictly demanded of me. Even now after taking the last couple weeks off, I still only really have time to phone in a quick entry. Hopefully once I’ve settled into a routine I’ll be able to devote more time to describing my experience here in this blog, but for now I’ll just write a few paragraphs on borrowed time.
Things have been busy but pleasant (other than getting sick). Classes started a week ago Wednesday. I’m teaching at 11 different schools; two junior highs and a bunch of elementarys. Some of the elementarys are way off in the country; the hour-long commutes though pine-covered mountain valleys will probably be pleasant once I know where I’m going, but I have to admit I’m not looking forward to trying to figure out the routes to each school the first time. I have a few schools within walking/biking distance, but the rest require a complicated series of bus transfers and being picked up by teachers at different times and places. I can’t imagine trying to navigate it without Japanese reading/speaking ability. Again, once I settle in and know where I’m going it’ll be fine, but in the meantime it’ll be a bit stressful.
So far I’ve visited one of the junior highs and one of the elementarys, and have had a bunch of great classes so far. I’m sure eventually I’ll have a few nightmare classes, but so far it’s been great. It’ll probably be a few months before I’m *completely* settled into teaching again, but for the most part I already feel like I’m already back into the groove.
Okay! I’d like to write more, but I’ll have to save it for another time; I’ve got a really busy day tomorrow, so I need to rest up for that. I have two three-day weekends coming up back-to-back, so hopefully I can write more then. Cheers!