Matthew Forsythe, award-winning cartoonist and artist [‘My Name is Elizabeth‘, ‘Warning: Do Not Open This Book!‘ ,’Ojingogo‘ & ‘Jinchalo‘, ‘Adventure Time‘] has been named Concordia University’s Mordecai Richler Writer in Residence for 2017!
By Salgood Sam
This is only the second year for the program, a residency that puts the authors in a facsimile of Richler’s old writing room and invites them to work in the setting for a year. Recognizing comics as literature so early in the run of the residence by making the talented Forsythe their pick gives our medium a nice nod by the institution.
“Mordecai Richler embraced his roots, his city, his neighbourhood. This residency will give me the opportunity to take a deeper dive into those things in my life as I had reserved this year exclusively for writing.”
Matt is expected to produce a series of ‘digital dispatches’ on topics inspired by Richler’s work and their currently shared hometown. And he’ll be teaching a course in visual storytelling, working in the Richler Reading Room and holding a public event of some kind in April reportedly [Gazette 1 & 2]. He’s currently working on a project called Trans siberian.
Here’s a gallery of photos of the Reading Room, and what Richler’s office originally looked like. The first residency was filled by author & actor Ann-Marie MacDonald.