Book happenings on multiple fronts

I’m back from San Diego Comic-Con, with weary legs, a semi-frazzled brain, eyes dazzled by the inventive cosplay, and a sense of joy in being in a place where diversity and inclusivity were celebrated.

I was there for the Eisner Awards, with Dead Man Walking: Graphic Edition one of the nominees in the Best Adaptation from Another Medium category. We didn’t win, but we and the other nominees were treated royally. We got to walk the Blue Carpet, where we were photographed and interviewed by multiple podcasters and comics publications, and that was followed by a sit-down dinner and the lengthy awards ceremony (marathon length seems de rigueur for such occasions).

A beautifully illustrated adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies won in our category, while perhaps the longest ovation of the night went to George Takei (of the original Star Trek fame) for his second graphic book, It Rhymes With Takei, about his activism and hidden gay identity in early Hollywood. That makes a brace of Eisners for Takei; his first graphic book, They Called Us Enemy, about his confinement with his family in a US concentration camp during World War II, won in 2020.

Dead Man Walking was featured at the Random House booth. At first, I thought it wasn’t available, but then I caught up with Kate Trine, Penguin Random House’s event manager, who told me it had almost sold out on the first day of Comic-Con and they’d pulled the remaining copies to have some available for the weekend.

Sister Helen Prejean and I gave a workshop titled ‘Drawing Mercy’ at the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice conference a couple of weeks ago and the response was so positive we decided to offer Zoom discussions for book clubs that read Dead Man Walking: Graphic Edition.

If you’re in a book club or other smallish group (minimum 10 people) that would like to join us for a Zoom discussion, you’ll find more information on the Book Club Zooms page of Sister Helen’s website.

Join Elizabeth Vartkessian
author of The Deserving
in conversation with Sister Helen Prejean and Rose Vines
Tuesday August 11 at 6pm
Garden District Bookshop
2727 Prytania St, New Orleans

Rose Preston was in South Africa when she received a phone call: “Your husband and mother-in-law have died.” Rose immediately thought it must have been an accident, a car wreck, perhaps. But the next words dispelled that image: “They were murdered.”

On her return to New Orleans, she found herself thrust into a bewildering world of coroners and police, prosecutors and court proceedings, a world that had few signposts. For someone in trauma, that lack of signposts added to her distress.

Rose determined that others shouldn’t face the same system alone and so, in 2009, she produced the first edition of the Crime Survivors NOLA Guide.

Today, Crime Survivors NOLA is a registered nonprofit and the Crime Survivors NOLA Guide has matured into its sixth edition, which was launched this week. There’s a multilingual online version of the Guide, too.

The original guide focused on family members of victims of murder. The latest version of the guide has broadened its content to include a rather harrowing list:

• homicide

• armed robbery

• carjacking

• non-fatal physical assault or shooting

• sexual assault

• child abuse

• elder abuse

• domestic/intimate partner violence

• stalking

• human trafficking

• college/school crimes

• hate crimes

• mass casualty/terrorism

• in-custody crimes

• re-entry support

• missing persons

• homicide-suicide

• fatal drug overdoses

Although the guide is tailored to those in New Orleans, it contains many resources that survivors and victims’ families everywhere will find useful.

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