Art Spiegelman (photo Enno Kapitza – Agentur Focus)

(ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.) – Pulitzer Prize-winning artist/illustrator Art Spiegelman and acclaimed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman and will discuss cartooning and writing, working across artistic mediums, friendship, identity, and more in a public conversation in the Sosnoff Theater at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Friday, April 4, 2014, at 7:30 p.m.

“Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves,” writes LA Weekly. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus — which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Maus II continued the remarkable story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America. His comics are best known for their shifting graphic styles, their formal complexity, and controversial content. In his lecture, “What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?” Spiegelman takes his audience on a chronological tour of the evolution of comics, all the while explaining the value of this medium and why it should not be ignored. Spiegelman believes that in our post-literate culture the importance of the comic is on the rise, for “comics echo the way the brain works. People think in iconographic images, not in holograms, and people think in bursts of language, not in paragraphs.”

Neil Gaiman (photo Kimberly Butler)

Neil Gaiman is an internationally acclaimed author of over 20 novels including Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book, as well as the comic books series, The Sandman, and is a prolific creator of works of poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. He is the recipient of the Hugo Award, Newbery Medal and Carnegie Medal in Literature, among other prizes, and is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers. Gaiman has achieved cult status and attracted increased media attention, with recent profiles in The New Yorker magazine and by ‘CBS News Sunday Morning.’ Gaiman is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Tickets are $25; $5 for Bard students, faculty/staff, and alumni/ae. To purchase tickets go to the Fisher Center, or call the box office at 845-758-7900.