Crossing Over: Comics and Prose

Canadian-born Cory Doctorow has held policy positions with Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and been a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Southern California. He is a co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing (boingboing.net), which receives over three million visitors a month. His science fiction has won numerous awards, and his YA novel Little Brother spent seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Online gaming and real life issues, such as economics, politics, and activism collide in Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang’s illustrated novel, In Real Life (First Second).

Joan Hilty is an independent editor, and co-founder of Pageturner, a boutique book agency and content production company specializing in graphic novels and illustrated works, developing and managing projects for authors, literary agents, publishers, and media companies. As a senior editor at DC Comics, she directed an all-ages licensed property comics line and acquired and edited literary graphic novels, including Cairo, Cuba: My Revolution, Gone to Amerikay, Shooters, and Bad Houses. Her awards include the Eisner Award, Harvey Award, Best Graphic Story from the International Horror Guild, the Glyph Comics Award, and Best American Comics 2013. Hilty wrote and drew the syndicated comic strip Bitter Girl; and her illustrated and prose writing has appeared in the Village Voice, The Advocate, Ms. Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, and The Guardian. She is currently a faculty member at NYC’s School of Visual Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art; a member of the PowderKeg writers’ residency; and serves on programming committees for the Miami Book Fair and Brooklyn Book Festival. She is also a founder of the independent editors group 5E.