The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature: Artists and Writers on Creating Graphic Narratives, Poetry Comics, and Literary Collage

by Kelcey Ervick (Editor), Tom Hart

The fourth volume in the immensely popular Field Guide series, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature gives readers unprecedented insight into the techniques of 28 of today’s most innovative creators of poetry comics, graphic narratives, and image-text hybrids. With original craft essays, corresponding exercises, and full-color examples of their work, each contributor offers reflection and instruction informed by their own methods and processes. From mark-making and page composition to deeper renderings of place, character, and voice, this much-needed guide to the field illuminates and demystifies the process of creating image+text work. Editors Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart also provide a historical introduction that links today’s graphic literature to visual storytelling of the past and helpful pedagogical resources to round out the volume. This is a book for writers who want to make graphic narratives and literary collage, illustrators and comics artists exploring new approaches to storytelling, teachers encouraging their students to work with image and text, and anyone curious about what one contributor calls “comics magic.”

Featuring Essays and Graphic Literature Work From: Justine Andersen, Oliver Baez Bendorf, Leonie Brialey, Thi Bui, Sharon Lee De La Cruz, David Dodd Lee, Arwen Donahue, Trinidad Escobar, Naoko Fujimoto, Marnie Galloway, Lauren Haldeman, Tom Hart, Mira Jacob, Keith Knight, Aidan Koch, Matt Madden, Mita Mahato, Deborah Miranda, Josh Neufeld, Dustin Parsons, Zeke Peña, Nick Francis Potter, Kristen Radtke, Scott Roberts, Alexander Rothman, Eleni Sikelianos, Bianca Stone, and Lawrence Sutin.

Genres: Poetry, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Nonfiction, Writing

285 pages, Paperback

Published July 7, 2023

Reviews

[Melanie Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creators of a wonderful and diverse variety of comics, graphic narratives/novels, hybrids, erasure projects, and collage projects share tips on their own work as well as excerpts from projects they've done. I love the exercises as well as the craft insights.

I'll definitely recommend this book to fellow teachers and graphic-novel readers. I'll also recommend it to my writing students interested in a book that is both instructional/craft-oriented and fun to read.

For educators, there's a great essay about teaching graphic literature in writing classrooms accompanied by a materials comic that is super helpful. The alternate TOC by form is also very useful.

I had been looking forward to reading this book for months, both for my own doodling/creating as well as for my pedagogy, and this book didn't disappoint at all.

If you're brand-new to analyzing or reading graphic novels or comics, you might want to check out Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics first to learn some of the technical terms, and I also recommend checking out Lynda Barry's Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor for inspiration and motivation.

This Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Literature would be a perfect main text or supplemental text, especially for university or grad-school courses, in many styles and genres of creative writing and/or art.

I'll keep this collection handy for my own inspiration (the prompts are awesome and varied) as well as for my teaching.

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, really appreciate what this book has to offer, particularly since there is not much on the emerging field of poetry comics.

The book is structured as an anthology of essays by various writer-artists who combine visual imagery with text. It also includes a very comprehensive introduction on the history of comic making by editor Kelcey Ervick.

Each contributing author focuses their essay on various topics related to their practice/work. At the end of each essay, the author provides an exercise for readers to try out the technique, then provides a sample from their own work. Although useful to explore, a few of the prompts/exercises were not the most clear or straightforward on how to execute the activities, unfortunately. I wish the editors had gone through them to make them more consistent in instruction.

I found the book a bit text heavy and more academic-leaning than other books I've read on comic-making, e.g. Scott McCloud, Will Eisner, Tom Hart's other how-to book. However, overall, it was awesome to have such a breadth of work to explore, to get the chance to read essays by some of my favourite graphic novelists (e.g. Thi Bui, Mira Jacob, Trinidad Escobar), and discover work by authors I'd never heard of before.

I can see this book being really great for any writers who are curious about integrating graphic work/comics/collages into their practice. Would definitely recommend.

[Elizabeth Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun book about creating graphic novels, memoir and other sequential art in books for artists and writers. Many authors contributed chapters to this book. Very useful in my current project. Chapters on lines, story structure, character development, place, voice, language and transforming archival materials. Highly recommend this for anyone working on a graphic book project.

[Lila Diller · Rating 4 out of 5]

So helpful, inspiring, and practical!!

The only things I didn't like were the highly inappropriate examples. :(

I will be using this to teach my son creative writing but editing out the exercises with examples I don't think he should be seeing yet.

[Howell Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide-ranging collection of essays, many with exercises you can do. This kind of a reference book rather than one I would read straight through. I found a lot of chapters I liked and others that dnt pertain to my work but were interesting nevertheless.

[Words, Images, & Worlds · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of what is possible with visual/graphic novel creating. I appreciated the many examples and clear writing.