Christi Furnas and Özge Samanci

Moderated by Olivia Fredricks

Saturday, October 19, 2024
Youth & Comics Stage, 4:00pm

Join graphic novelists Özge Samanci and Christi Furnas as they discuss their new books, which draw on personal experience to create compelling works that resonate as well as educate. In Evil Eyes Sea, Samanci tells a story of political intrigue and corruption in 1990s Turkey through the eyes of two students. Meanwhile, Christi Furnas’s Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia chronicles the complexities of navigating life with invisible struggles with a fantastical cast of animal characters. Don’t miss this engaging conversation on the power of the graphic novel format to tell stories that resonate on both intimate and universal levels. (Ages teen and up)

About the Authors

Christi Furnas is a queer cartoonist, illustrator, oil painter, and disability rights advocate. She has exhibited in galleries across Minnesota and in New York City, and her career includes over ten years of arts administration, teaching art workshops, and numerous speaking engagements. She lives with her partner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia is her debut graphic novel. Visit her at christifurnas.com.

Özge Samanci is a media artist, graphic novelist, and Associate Professor at Northwestern University. She received her Ph.D. in Digital Media from Georgia Institute of Technology; in 2017, she received the Berlin Prize, and was the Holtzbrinck Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Visit her at ozgesamanci.com.

Olivia Fredricks is a printmaker and illustrator who makes zines, comics, prints, and other narrative-based works. Her work has been shown in numerous group shows around the country, and is in collections such as the Library of Congress, the Barnard College Zine Library, and the Special Collections of Michigan State University, Temple University, and Reed College Libraries. She is currently a visiting associate professor of Drawing and Printmaking at the University of Minnesota.