Islanded

 

Left to right: 61CHi, Ahn Zhe, me, Chaung Yung-shin, Tim Gibson, Ant Sang, Catriona Ferguson (Director of NZ Book Council), [taking the photograph, and translating] Dala Publishing's Aho Huang. 

October was such a successful month for me, I didn't get a chance to write much about the Graphic Novelist Exchange Residency I'm participating in as I had to scoot off to Scotland to attend the Dundee International Book Prize (though, if you click on the link, you can read brief reports from Ant, Tim and me about the first week of the residency, on Booknotes Unbound, as well as introductions to the work of 61Chi, Chuang Yung-shin and Ahn Zhe). But since I landed back in NZ, I've had time to think over the past month and realise how lucky I am. I have really landed on my feet.

Thanks to the New Zealand Book Council and the Publisher's Association of New Zealand in association with the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, I got selected to spend a week at Vaughan Park with Ant Sang, Tim Gibson, and Taiwanese graphic artists 61Chi, Ahn Zhe and Chuang Yung-shin (Sean), to work on a collaborative graphic fiction publication.

Art work from the book-in-progress will be exhibited at the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) in February 2015, when the second part of the residency will take place in Taiwan.

      

When I found out I had been selected for the residency, I started a visual journal. But I thought it might be interesting to blog the experience, island to island, starting with day one of the residency.