If you’re in the Bay Area this week, you should attend this conversation. It is one of our events leading up to 2017’s Black Comix Arts Festival, a Co-Presentation of MoAD, Cartoon Art Museum, and Black Comix Art Festival.

Join the Cartoon Art Museum and Black Comix Art Festival at the Museum of the African Diaspora for, “Ajuan Mance in Conversation with Shawn Taylor,” an evening celebration of current Bay Area cartooning sensation Ajuan Mance as part of the SF Comics Fest. Writer Shawn Taylor from The Nerds of Color will chat with Ajuan about her latest projects in illustration, cartooning and writing, her creative process, her recent rise in popularity, and what she plans to achieve next.

By day Ajuan Mance is a professor of English teacher at Mills College with an interest in African American literature, 19th-century American literature, US popular culture, the oral tradition in US literature, Black feminist thought, and African American art. By night she has more recently become an illustrator, cartoonist, and zinester. Her moving works of literature and art earned Ajuan Mance the title “Guest of Honor” at this year’s 2016 San Francisco Zine Fest.

Ajuan Mance’s publications include: Gender Studies, an autobiographical story of life as a Black, genderqueer nerd; The Little Book of Big, Black Bears tributes queer Black men in the bear community; A Blues for Black Santa explains what it’s like when no one believes Santa is Black; 1001 Black Men features portraits of Bay Area Black Men; and “Requiem for a Hot Comb” a story in the renowned queer diversity comics anthology ALPHABET.

About the Black Comix Arts Fest:
The Black Comix Arts Festival (BCAF) celebrates African Americans’ creativity in the comic arts and popular visual culture and is dedicated to the notion that all audiences deserve to be subject in the culture in which we participate. The two-day event includes a grand expo, kids activities, film screenings, panels and conversations, cosplay events and much more. A partnership with the San Francisco Public Library, BCAF is a festival of the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation and is part of the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrations in San Francisco. Find out more at bcaf.sfmlkday.org.

About the Cartoon Art Museum:
Founded in 1984, the Cartoon Art Museum is the only museum in the western United States dedicated to collection, preservation, study and exhibition of original cartoon art in all forms to benefit historians, cartoonists, journalists, artists, collectors and the general public.  Visit cartoonart.org for more information.

WHEN:
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT

WHERE:
Museum of the African Diaspora
685 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

Purchase tickets here.