Kevin Haworth

Best known for her Eisner Award–winning graphic novels, Exit Wounds and The Property, Rutu Modan’s richly colored compositions invite readers into complex Israeli society, opening up a world too often defined only by news headlines. Her strong female protagonists stick out in a comics scene still too dominated by men, as she combines a mystery novelist’s plotting with a memoirist’s insights into psychology and trauma. The Comics of Rutu Modan: War, Love, and Secrets conducts a close reading of her work and examines her role in creating a comics arts scene in Israel. Drawing upon archival research, Kevin Haworth traces the history of Israeli comics from its beginning as 1930s cheap children’s stories, through the counterculture movement of the 1970s, to the burst of creativity that began in the 1990s and continues full force today. Based on new interviews with Modan (b. 1966) and other comics artists, Haworth indicates the key role of Actus Tragicus, the collective that changed Israeli comics forever and launched her career. Haworth shows how Modan’s work grew from experimental minicomics to critically acclaimed graphic novels, delving into the creative process behind Exit Wounds and The Property. He analyzes how the recurring themes of family secrets and absence weave through her stories and how she adapts the famous clear line illustration style to her morally complex tales. Though still relatively young, Modan has produced a remarkably varied oeuvre. Identifying influences from the United States and Europe, Haworth illustrates how Modan’s work is global in its appeal, even as it forms a core of the thriving Israeli cultural scene.

War, Love, and Secrets

The Comics of Rutu Modan

This quiet story of the Holocaust chronicles the lives of several Danes through the summer of 1943. It is the discontinuity of small things--the scattered inconveniences, chance meetings, glimpses of injustice, and indulgences of hope, --that haphazardly directs each individual to his fate. An hypnotic story of ordinary people caught in a silent maelstrom, ultimately driven to extraordinary feats. FIC000000

The Discontinuity of Small Things

Dinty W. Moore

Lit from Within offers creative writers a window into the minds of some of America’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Witty, direct, and thought-provoking, these essays offer something to creative writers of all backgrounds and experience. With contributions from fiction writers, poets, and nonfiction writers, this is a collection of unusual breadth and quality.

Contemporary Masters on the Art and Craft of Writing

Lit from Within

Lit from Within offers creative writers a window into the minds of some of America’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Witty, direct, and thought–provoking, these essays offer something to creative writers of all backgrounds and experience. With contributions from fiction writers, poets, and nonfiction writers, this is a collection of unusual breadth and quality. Contributors: Lee K. Abbott, Rick Bass, Claire Bateman, Charles Baxter, Ron Carlson, Billy Collins, Peter Ho Davies, Carl Dennis, Stephen Dunn, Robin Hemley, Tony Hoagland, David Kirby, Maggie Nelson, Francine Prose, Mary Ruefle

Jason Pettus

What exactly does it mean to be young, Jewish and creative in 21st-century America? How do you reconcile a quiet life in the Midwest with a parallel life in Israel? And how do you fit in a five-year-old son with an interest in frilly dresses? Ohio professor and celebrated cultural essayist Kevin Haworth answers these questions and more in this, his debut full-length essay collection; and the answers are part Sloane Crosley, part Philip Roth, with a dash of Malcolm Gladwell's intelligence and a pinch of Denis Johnson's poetic style. Already the winner of a pre-publication grant from the Ohio Arts Council, from a former winner of the Samuel Goldberg Prize for Jewish fiction, this will be right up the alley of those who enjoy "The Believer" and "This American Life," a charming but darkly tinged look at circumcision, terrorist bombers, the Catskills in the '70s, and all the other confusing things that make up the life of post-9/11 Jewish American parents and artists.

Kevin Haworth

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