Join us for an afternoon with Coco Picard, Devin King, Anthony Madrid, Nadya Pittendrigh, and Julia Hendrickson. We’ll be celebrating the release earlier this year of Coco’s graphic novel The Chronicles of Fortune.
The Chronicles Of Fortune stands as a confirmation of the misfit’s path in life. Not only is it okay to be different, it’s okay to look like a failure in the eyes of others. Who cares? Just you, you’re the only one who needs to care. And are you happy? That seems to be what Picard is asking. —Comics Beats
Originally published as a series of mini-comics, The Chronicles of Fortune follows the lives of Fortuna, and her alter-ego, Edith-May, as they learn to cope with loss, recruiting a team of friends along the way. Discover a temperamental stove, a nosy mountain, a goofy crocodile, a loner moth, and a singing goldfish as they lead Fortuna on her greatest adventure. At once charming, sad, funny, poignant, and bizarre, The Chronicles of Fortune keeps one foot in mundane reality.
Coco Picard (above) is a writer, publisher, and curator. She is the Executive Director of The Green Lantern Press—a nonprofit publishing house and art producer in operation since 2005—and the Co-Director of Sector 2337, a hybrid artspace/bar/bookstore in Chicago. Her critical writing appears under the name Caroline Picard in publications like ArtForum (critics picks), art21, Flash Art International, Hyperallergic, and The Seen. A recent essay about the cats of James Joyce, Marcel Broodthaers, Derrida, the Walker Art Center, and Art Orienté object, The Strangers Among Us, was released in chapbook-form by Astrophil Press in 2017. Fiction and comics have appeared in Hyperallergic, The Coming Envelope (Book Thug), Necessary Fiction, Tupelo Quarterly, Everyday Genius and she has two contributions in vols 1 + 3 of The Graphic Canon (Seven Stories Press). TSK, a novel inspired by the ghost of Joseph Beuys, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press in 2019.
Devin King is the co-director of Sector 2337 and the poetry editor for the Green Lantern Press. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Anthony Madrid lives in Victoria, Texas. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2013, Boston Review, Fence, Harvard Review, Lana Turner, LIT, and Poetry. His second book, just out from Canarium (February 2017), is called Try Never.
Nadya Pittendrigh teaches writing at the University of Houston–Victoria.
Julia V. Hendrickson is a curator, writer, and editor, and the Associate Curator at The Contemporary Austin.