The 100th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 8 pm at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Please note 8pm starting time.

Presentations: Michael DeForge, Simon Hanselmann & Patrick Kyle.

Michael DeForge goes through different finished and unfinished projects he’s thrown away before publication. He discusses the value of abandoning projects, scripted versus improvised storytelling and the importance of digressions in the writing process.

Michael DeForge was born in 1987 and grew up in Ottawa, Ontario. He moved to Toronto for school in the mid 2000s where he became an integral part of the local comics scene. His debut work, Lose #1, was published in 2009 and was quickly followed by a catalog of minis, zines, short stories in anthology collections, and four more issues of Lose.  In 2010 DeForge won for “Best Emerging Talent” at the Doug Wright Awards, and in 2011 he won the award for non-narrative and nominally-narative work for his Spotting Dear. In 2013 Koyama Press published DeForge’s book collection of work entitled Very Casual.

Simon Hanselmann will discuss the Australian comics scene, the virtues of Tumblr as a distribution platform, making money, ‘the future’ and his general comics making process. Also: various crackpot theories and obscure in-jokes.

Simon Hanselmann is a Tasmanian born cartoonist best known for his Megg, Mogg and Owl series^. In July 2013  Fantagraphics Books published his  200-page collection of strips Megahex. In August 2013, Simon Hanselmann was nominated for an Ignatz award for his comic St.Owl’s Bay. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Having self-published comics for the better part of the last decade, Patrick Kyle will discuss the logistics of playing publisher while balancing careers as both a cartoonist and illustrator.

Patrick Kyle lives and works in Toronto, Canada. He is the co-founder and editor of Wowee Zonk, a contemporary comic book anthology featuring upcoming narrative artists from Toronto. He has been previously nominated for Doug Wright and Ignatz awards for his comic book series Black Mass and Distance Mover. Patrick’s illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, The Walrus, Transworld Skateboarding Magazine, and Vice Magazine.