Ariel Schrag speaking of her work, influences and her story
Ariel Schrag’s Awkward and Definition was selected for the American Library Association Rainbow List. Her book Potential written during the summer following her junior year at Berkeley High School was nominated for an Eisner Award and is currently being developed into a feature film by Christine Vachon’s Killer Films (Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce). Potential describes Ariel’s first real relationship and first ever love with a girl, her mission to lose her virginity to a boy, and her parents’ divorce. Also including the personal and social difficulties of writing about her life as she lives it. Schrag wrote the screenplay adaptation. Likewise determines her unsettled journey through high school in the final volume of her series of incredibly honest autobiographical graphic novels. It was nominated for a Lambda Literacy Award. Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age (Viking) an anthology of comics about middle school was selected for New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age in 2008. Her illustrations and comics have been in publications such as The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Juxtapoz, and Paper. Her original art has been displayed in museums and galleries across the United States as well as in Austria, Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She also does live performances of her comics across the country, which include projected slides of comic panels with herself reading the voices and a musical soundtrack to benefit the story, which brought her touring the United States and Canada in 2009. Ariel was the subject of the short documentary film Confession: A Film About Ariel Schrag by the director Sharon Barnes. Confession played on PBS and Channel 4 in England and won the Audience Award at New York New Festival. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in English Literature and since 2004 she has taught the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School, as well as other classes at Brown University, New York University, Butler University, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Intersection for the Arts. She was a 2012 Radar Lab and Yaddo fellow now living in Brooklyn, New York.
Ariel Schrag’s Awkward and Definition was selected for the American Library Association Rainbow List. Her book Potential written during the summer following her junior year at Berkeley High School was nominated for an Eisner Award and is currently being developed into a feature film by Christine Vachon’s Killer Films (Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce). Potential describes Ariel’s first real relationship and first ever love with a girl, her mission to lose her virginity to a boy, and her parents’ divorce. Also including the personal and social difficulties of writing about her life as she lives it. Schrag wrote the screenplay adaptation. Likewise determines her unsettled journey through high school in the final volume of her series of incredibly honest autobiographical graphic novels. It was nominated for a Lambda Literacy Award. Stuck in the Middle: 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age (Viking) an anthology of comics about middle school was selected for New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age in 2008. Her illustrations and comics have been in publications such as The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Juxtapoz, and Paper. Her original art has been displayed in museums and galleries across the United States as well as in Austria, Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom. She also does live performances of her comics across the country, which include projected slides of comic panels with herself reading the voices and a musical soundtrack to benefit the story, which brought her touring the United States and Canada in 2009. Ariel was the subject of the short documentary film Confession: A Film About Ariel Schrag by the director Sharon Barnes. Confession played on PBS and Channel 4 in England and won the Audience Award at New York New Festival. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in English Literature and since 2004 she has taught the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School, as well as other classes at Brown University, New York University, Butler University, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Intersection for the Arts. She was a 2012 Radar Lab and Yaddo fellow now living in Brooklyn, New York.
-Cassandra Tatarnic
In regards to Ariel’s tone I feel like you may agree with me that Awkward and Definition have a similar tone that MTV’s show Awkward does in the sense of the main character Jenna Hamilton. In the show she experiences many embarrassing things and explores drinking, drugs, crushes etc. Both Ariel and the character Jenna are writers that openly express themselves through their words. Overall I thought this was an interesting comparison.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mtv.ca/shows/awkward