Join us for readings by the amazing faculty leading the Graphic Novels and Visual Narratives Residency here at Banff Centre. Matt Madden and Bishakh Som are both well regarded authors, teachers, cartoonists, and visual artists who focus on diverse and dynamic story telling. Both writers will be reading a selection of their work for the public.

Matt Madden is a cartoonist and translator who has also taught in art schools around the world. He known for his playful and inventive comics like the metafictional romp Ex Libris and 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style which led to his initiation into Oubapo, The Workshop for Potential Comics, in 2005. In 2013 he was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He has also done translations from the French and Spanish, including Aristophane's The Zabîme Sisters (First Second) and Edmond Baudoin’s Piero (New York Review Comics). He wrote two comics textbooks in collaboration with his wife, Jessica Abel, and the couple were series editors for The Best American Comics from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt for six years. From 2012 to 2016, he and his family did a four-year residency in Angoulême, France at La Maison des Auteurs. They are currently living in Philadelphia where he is doing translations and working on new comics when he’s not looking after his kids or playing guitar.  

Bishakh Som is an Indian-American trans femme visual artist and author. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Autostraddle, The Strumpet, The Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review and The Brooklyn Rail, amongst other publications.   Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) is the winner of a 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner for Best LGBTQ Comics. Her graphic memoir Spellbound (Street Noise Books) was also a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist.  Bishakh has illustrated two books about architecture: The Prefab Bathroom: An Architectural History, (McFarland Press) and Cocktails and Conversations: Dialogues on Architectural Design (AIA New York).  Bishakh’s artwork was featured in solo shows at ArtLexis Gallery and at Jaya Yoga Center and in group shows at The Society of Illustrators in New York, the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College, Issyra Gallery, the Grady Alexis Gallery, De Cacaofabriek in the Netherlands and most recently at Art Omi in Ghent, NY. You can see her work at www.bishakh.com.