Women of Comics Keynote Speech

5/19/2006   Heidi MacDonald did the keynote speech for the Women of Comics Symposium. It was a really thoughtful piece, and she's put it up on the Beat so everyone can now read it...

[The following is a slightly cleaned up version of the speech I gave on April 29th in Toronto, to kick off the Women of Comics Symposium.]

I’d like to thank Peter Fisico, Peter Dixon and Kevin Boyd for inviting me to be here and I’d like to welcome you to the Women of Comics symposium. To my knowledge, no one has thrown an event of this kind before in North America, and I think it’s about time someone took advantage of all the women in comics.

This symposium celebrating the achievements of women in graphic literature couldn’t be more timely, as well. In looking at all the amazingly talented women here, it makes such clichés as “we’ve come a long way,” spring to mind. Another one of the participants remarked to me the other night that she felt ambivalent about “women in comics” events, but in looking at the people gathered here, there is such a wide range of styles, genres and goals, and such a high level of achievement, that the phrase seems to have no limiting factor, but goes hand in hand with the blossoming of the comics medium that we are now seeing.

>> Read the whole speech at the Beat.