Words and Pictures

Kristen Radtke is the author of two graphic non-fiction books: Imagine

Wanting Only This and Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness.

She’s also been the Art Director and Deputy Publisher at the magazine The

Believer and a writer whose work has appeared in The Ne...

As the Portland Book Festival recovers from the Covid pandemic, we welcome

the return of Aminder Dhaliwal, whose new book Cyclopedia Exotica grew out

of a serialized online comic, just like her earlier book Woman World.

Aminder has worked as a storyboard director for the...

In this followup to our 2019 interview with underground comics legend Bill

Griffith, we talk more about his remarkable 50-year career as an

underground artist, helping kickstart the underground comics movement of the

1960's with his mashups of pop culture and surrealism,...

Douglas Wolk is an award-winning journalist, author, and pop-culture critic

who's written about comics and music for The New York Times, Rolling

Stone, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.  His books include James Brown's Live

at the Apollo and Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels...

Mike Konopacki is a longtime labor cartoonist who collaborated with

historians Howard Zinn and Paul Buhle to adapt Zinn's book A People’s

History of the United States into comics form.

Konopacki joined S.W. Conser in July of 2008 to offer a behind-the-scenes

look at the...

In October of 2010, political cartoonists Ted Rall and Matt Bors joined S.W.

Conser in the KBOO studios for a live interview about the unembedded

fact-finding trip they took through Afghanistan two months earlier.  Due to

time constraints, many of their additional storie...

Derf Backderf is the author of multiple graphic novels, including My Friend

Dahmer, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, Trashed, and the

Eisner-award-winning Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio.  His alternative

comic The City ran in over 75 weekly newspapers for 25 years, and his bo...

Editorial cartoons are often the most popular feature on the newspaper page,

but with print publications battered by the left-right punch of the internet

and vulture capital, more and more political cartoonists find themselves

wandering in a media wilderness.

Enter Coun...

Spain Rodriguez was one of the most prolific and visionary members of the

underground cartoonist movement in the 1960’s and 70’s.  He covered the

1968 Democratic National Convention for the newspaper The East Village

Other, he ran with the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club, ...