FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington is excited to present graphic novelist, illustrator, painter, and educator Leela Corman as the first reader of the 2024-25 season of its popular Visiting Writers series.
This multifaceted artist creates entirely hand painted comics and graphic novels in watercolor, gouache and acrylics. She works primarily with Polish-Jewish history and life in both her fiction and non-fiction comics, as well as women’s history, 20th century New York history, trauma, loss and music. Her illustrations have appeared on album covers for PBS , the New York Times, and BUST Magazine.
Corman will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 12 in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing with the author.
Corman’s most recent release “Victory Parade” (Schocken-Pantheon, 2024) is a portrait of individual and collective trauma. Following a group of women who work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II and entering into the world of female professional wrestling, the novel’s characters grapple with their physical distance and emotional proximity to the front lines of the war.
Publishers Weekly calls the novel, “The finest work yet from an always formidable artist, this is a revelatory meditation on the cost of survival.”
Corman’s previous graphic novel “Unterzakhn” (Schocken-Pantheon, 2012) was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Eisner Award, and Le Prix Artemisia. Her short work “And When I See You, I’ll Tell You Everything” (Fieldmouse Press, 2024) is a finalist for the Ignatz Award.
A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Corman’s work has appeared in The Nib, Nautilus Magazine, and Symbolia, among others. She is a founding member of the Sequential Artists Workshop and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. “Victory Parade” is available for pre-purchase at the University Store on the UMF campus and Devany, Doak, and Garret Booksellers.
The Visiting Writer Series is sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.
As the only Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in the state of Maine and one of only three in all of New England, the UMF program invites students to work with faculty, who are practicing writers, in workshop-style classes to discover and develop their writing strengths in the genres of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Small classes, an emphasis on individual conferencing, and the development of a writing portfolio allow students to see themselves as artists and refine their writing under the guidance of accomplished and published faculty mentors.
Students can pursue internships to gain real-world writing and publishing experience by working on campus with The Sandy River Review, a student-run literary magazine; or The Farmington Flyer, a university newspaper.
