Comics Alternative Interviews: Julia Wertz
Episode description
Time Codes:
- 00:00:25 - Introduction
- 00:02:39 - Setup of interview
- 00:04:29 - Interview with Julia Wertz
- 01:10:16 - Wrap up
- 01:12:40 - Contact us
On this interview episode, Paul and Derek are pleased to have Julia Wertz on the podcast. Her new book, Tenements, Towers and Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City, came out earlier this month from Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. As the subtitle suggests, this is a different kind of history, a guide to the Big Apple's present as well as its past, investigating its architecture, its businesses, its facades, its entertainment venues, and the many colorful figures who have populated its boroughs. The guys talk with Julia about how different this book is from her previous works -- e.g., Drinking at the Movies, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, Fart Party -- which are primarily autobiographical. For this project, the author considered herself an urban explorer, forgoing the inward gaze and focusing instead on the city that she called home between 2007 and 2016. Tenements, Towers and Trash includes a variety of stories that compose its past, and punctuating the text is a series of before-and-after illustrations of storefronts and city blocks that underscore New York's ever-changing nature. This isn't a nostalgic look back at what once had been, but a chronicle of a dynamic urban space in the process of becoming. And of course, the book has more than its share of Julia's poignant, even laugh-out-loud, humor.