Virtual Memories Show 481:
Anneli Furmark
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“There shouldn’t be any difference between a landscape drawn in a book in a story and one in a frame; it’s still my vision of a landscape.”
Swedish cartoonist (okay: serietecknare) Anneli Furmark joins the show to celebrate the publication of Walk Me To The Corner (Drawn & Quarterly, tr. Hanna Strömberg), her wonderful graphic novel about a woman in her mid-50s who falls in love with a woman at a party and tries to balance that relationship with the life she’s lived up to that moment. We get into Anneli’s evolution as a cartoonist, how she copes with winters in northern Sweden and why drawing in summer isn’t as fun, how Walk Me To The Corner flowed from life into story, and how the pandemic left so little room for chance. We also get intothe false split between fine art and comics, northern Sweden’s colonial history & culture, the importance of trusting your translator, the balance of the politics & the personal in her graphic novel Red Winter, her recent work adapting someone else’s prose, what she’s learned from teaching narrative drawing, my explanation of what a “May-December” romance is, and more. Give it a listen! And go read Walk Me To The Corner!
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Anneli Furmark was born in 1962 and grew up in Lulea (Sweden). She studied at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, where she now occasionally teaches. A painter and comic artist, her first graphic novel, The Mazes and Other Stories, was published in 2002. She has since produced 10 graphic novels and won the Urhunden Prize from the Swedish Comics Association for three of her books. Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies, and been published internationally as well as in several Swedish newspapers. The French edition of her book Red Winter was part of the Official Selection at the 2016 Angouleme International Comics Festival. Walk Me To The Corner is her second book in English for Drawn and Quarterly.
Follow Anneli on Instagram.
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
