Comics Relief: A First Second Festival

Hello my fellow bookworms!

This past April 18th, I attended an online virtual comic festival called Comics Relief: A First Second Festival. The festival consists of several online panels where you can hear from comic book and graphic novel artists and authors talk about their inspiration, experiences, and process in creating. The event was so popular that everyone was requested to ask questions prior to the festival and, on the day of, you may have had to "wait" (and refresh your webpage) to be entered into the event!

Once entered into the event, you have the option to participate with your webcam and microphone. If you do not feel like actively participating, you can choose to listen in anonymously and a default profile photo will be used for your image. The microphones were muted during the panel, as any questions attendees had were emailed prior to the event to help cut down time and consolidate answers. The authors, illustrators, and editors went through their presentations and answered submitted questions along the way. At the end of the panel, they went through any remaining questions they had not yet covered. In all, it was a fun time!

I attended the second session, Writing A Script: Go With The Flow, with Lily Williams (author), Karen Schneemann (author), and Emily Feinberg (editor). The three discussed how they went about writing the script for their graphic novel, the color themes, how they wanted the characters to act and look, and more. Go With The Flow is a middle school grade graphic novel about periods and creating a "period revolution," where a group of high school girls try to create menstrual equality on their school grounds. Here are some screenshots of the event in action!

Comics Relief: A First Second Festival - Go With The Flow Screenshot No. 1

Comics Relief: A First Second Festival - Go With The Flow Screenshot No. 2

Comics Relief: A First Second Festival - Go With The Flow Screenshot No. 3

If you are interested in participating in similar festivals by First Second Books, I encourage you to check out their website and subscribe to their newsletters! This was my first time participating in a virtual panel, and it was fun! It is always interesting to learn about the book writing process, or in this case, graphic novel writing and drawing process, and what it takes to become the final product we know it as today. For us readers, we appreciate all the hard work!

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I hope you are all doing well bookworms. I hope you are safe and healthy, and that you are reading everything on your to-read list. Until next time!