The Working Poet Radio Show: Bringing Books to Life

Charles Kochman is the editorial director of Abrams ComicArts and editor of the #1 bestselling series Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Kochman has edited several hundred books for all age groups, including picture books, retrospectives, definitive monographs, award-winning graphic novels; and collections. Prior to Abrams, Kochman spent twelve years as the first editor of licensed publishing at DC Comics and MAD Magazine, where he launched the MAD Books. A graduate of Brooklyn College with a BA in children’s literature, Kochman is a member of the National Cartoonists Society and the Society of Illustrators, and is on the board of advisors for the San Diego Comic-Con’s Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, the Spectrum Art Annual, and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA).

Derf Backderf is the recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, appeared in more than one hundred newspapers over the past twenty-two years. Derf Backderf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed, award-winning international bestseller My Friend Dahmer, is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs—garbage collector. Trashed (Abrams ComicArts) is fiction, but is inspired by Derf’s own experiences as a garbage man. Interspersed are nonfiction pages that detail what our garbage is and where it goes. The answers will stun you.

In his hilarious and touching graphic memoir, Ghetto Klown, celebrated Columbian-American actor, producer, comedian, playwright and screenwriter John Leguizamo depicts his early years in blue-collar Queens, his salvation through acting and writing, working with stars such as Al Pacino and Patrick Swayze and with directors such as Baz Luhrmann and Brian De Palma, his offstage life in love and marriage, and his journey of moving beyond self-doubt—and beyond the doubters—to claim some happiness.

Joseph Lapin is a journalist, creative director, poet, and author in San Diego, California. His writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Slate, the Independent, Narratively, the Rattling Wall, the Middle Gray, Sirens Call Publications’ anthology Mental Ward: Echoes of the Past, Literary Orphans, and Sliver of Stone. He is a contributing writer at the LA Weekly, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a graduate of the MFA program at Florida International University. He is the host of the Working Poet Radio show.  The Working Poet Radio Show (WPRS) is a podcast and interview series dedicated to the working lives of creative people. Inspired by late-night talk shows, Joseph Lapin, host of WPRS, journalist, and author, is interested in the poetry that powers everyone from novelists to graphic designers to nanotechnologists. As a young creative himself, he uses the interview series to learn about the career paths and the working lives of established artists, innovators, and writers in order to inspire other working creatives.