Presenter: Jean Harper, MFA
Abstract
This presentation will give an overview of Jean Harper’s study of texts that incorporate visual elements in order to articulate story narratives, including: a nineteenth century whaling comic, contemporary mainstream comics, long-form graphic texts, and narrative quilts. As part of this presentation, Harper will provide glimpses into well-known and iconic works, as well as some of her own (neither well-known nor iconic) work.
Biographical Statement
Jean Harper, MFA, specializes in creative nonfiction, documentary writing and film, memoir, an interest in comics, and other forms of texts that incorporate visual materials. Jean has published two award-winning memoirs, Rose City: A Memoir of Work (2005), Still Life with Horses (2017) An e-book of Still Life with Horses will also be published in 2020. She has also written and directed a documentary film 1:47 (2008); her essays have been published in The Iowa Review, The North American Review, The Florida Review, Harpur Palate, excerpted in Not Like The Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Writers and recognized as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Indiana Arts Commission, and elsewhere. In 2012, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose.
