Embracing April's chaotic energy

The fact is: I love April in all its Aprilness. It’s my birthday month. It’s a rainy rainbow month.

I love how, as Edna St. Vincent Millay says, “April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.”

April fills you with an urge to make art—then does all it can to stop you.

April is so chaotic that last week I forgot to run my weekly Letters to Dead Authors & Artists post. I’ve published a letter every week for 32 weeks, and this week was so full of awards and events and student presentations and final projects that I just…FORGOT.

But I’ll be back with a new letter to a dead author this Thursday, and next weekend I’ll be taking the show on the road! I’m excited to head to Toledo for the Northwest Ohio Teen Book Festival, where I’m adapting the “dead authors” idea for a workshop with teens. I’ll also join other authors on panels to talk about research and visual storytelling—two topics related to my graphic memoir, The Keeper. Here’s my schedule for Saturday, April 25:

• 11:10am Down a Rabbit Hole: The Merit of Research

• 12:00pm Visual Storytelling in Comics, Zines, and Memoir

• 1:40pm The Reader Writes Back: Letters to Authors and Characters with Kelcey Ervick

I’ve never been part of a teen-only book festival, and I’m so excited!

The next zoom hangout for paid subscribers is Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 11am ET. We are talking about Big Projects—mostly book projects (graphic memoirs, illustrated essays, narrative nonfiction, novels). The topic for the session is currently “Inner Stories” (but I might change it). Visit the paid subscribers tab for more info.

Thanks for reading The Habit of Art by Kelcey Ervick, a Substack Featured Publication (twice!). I love writing and drawing these posts and am grateful to everyone who follows along. I’m the author of four award-winning books, including the graphic memoir The Keeper, which Alison Bechdel called “a triumph!” (her exclamation point). I’m a professor of creative writing in Indiana, and I live on the banks of the St. Joseph River.

-Kelcey