UPCOMING EVENTS: Family Portraits Book Launch & Everything and Everyone Market!

After a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign and tour of the USA, Sam Orchard is officially launching his comic series, Family Portraits this coming Wednesday, February 18th at The Woman's Bookstop at 105 Ponsonby Road, from 6pm.

Family Portraits tells the stories of a group of unique individuals, and explores the awesomeness of their sexual orientations and/or gender identities. These stories celebrate the differences and diversity in our communities. They look at how our ages, histories, genders, beliefs and ethnicities shape our experiences of ourselves, and how we live in the world.

Sam Orchard has created these stories based on real New Zealanders, exploring a range of topics including; what it was like to be in a gay relationship before Homosexual law reform in New Zealand, and what it’s like to be a first-generation queer from a migrant background. The comics can be used as a way to educate, breakdown barriers, and help people to understand more about our communities.

Above: The cover of Family Portraits #1 by Sam Orchard. Copyright Sam Orchard 2015.

The event kicks off at The Woman's Bookshop at 6pm, with entry via gold coin donation. You can also RSVP for the event on Facebook HERE. So if you are in Auckland next week, come out and support the launch of this important landmark comic series! 

For more information on Sam you can check out his website HERE, along with his regular webcomic Rooster Tails - an autobiographical series about his life and relationship as a queer transgender guy.

It's actually a very busy week for Sam, as well as launching Family Portraits, he's also the organiser of the Everything and Everyone Market, taking place on Saturday 21st of February, from 12 - 3pm at Alleluya Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade, 183 Karangahape Rd.

Now in its second year, Everything and Everyone celebrates diversity in our community during the Auckland Pride Festival with an art and craft market that has a particularly queer flavour - featuring: DIY arts, crafts, comics and self-publishing. This is an event for people wanting to buy or sell goods exploring queerness, transness, sexuality, gender, poly, kink, leather, feminism, geekery, and everything in between. In short, it is an art and craft market for Everything and Everyone!

Stallholders exhibiting and selling goods at the event include: Rooster Tails, Fight X Back, Zigtoons, Tricia, Square Planet, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Table of Temptation: Book Crossing, Rainbow T-Towel Love, with more to be announced.

For more information and updates on this great upcoming event, you can visit the Everything and Everyone website HERE.

- AK!

Sam Orchard's Family Portraits Kickstarter!

Above: Family Portraits promo image. Copyright Sam Orchard 2014.

Sam Orchard has been a stand-out talent in the local comics scene for some years, producing the much loved webcomic Rooster Tails - an autobiographical series about his life and relationship as a queer transgender guy. He has regularly appeared at Zinefest events and contributed to various local and international anthologies, as well as a number of human rights education and advocacy campaigns.

Produced as a part of his Master of Creative Writing degree in 2011, his auto-bio comic series Family Portraits interweaves Sam's own story as a queer-identified transgender man with vignettes of other queer individuals living in New Zealand. It explores and celebrates how age, history, gender, and ethnicity shape our experiences of ourselves, and how we live in the world. How the stories of others can reflect and affirm our own stories, either through connections or differences.

 

Above: the covers of Family Portraits #1-2 by Sam Orchard. Copyright Sam Orchard 2014.

As the series was produced in full-colour, high printing and shipping costs have prevented Sam from making his comic available in print, so he has turned to crowd sourcing platform Kickstarter to make this happen!

Sam is looking looking to raise $6300 which will pay for the printing of the first two issues of the series (60 pages of full-colour comics in each issue!) and fund a limited tour of the US - where he can connect with his dedicated US reader-base and attend some small press/comic conventions.

So without further ado, he's Sam to talk about the campaign in his own words:

You can pledge and support the Kickstarter project HERE. There are some great rewards available, so please throw your support behind this very worthy cause!

- AK!