Sunday, August 12, 2007

Upcoming events for Gatsby, writers festivals and new projects...


Now that the launch of The Great Gatsby graphic novel is just a few weeks away, it seems like a good time to start the blog ball rolling. For more info on this enormous project, check out this page.

Upcoming events include:

  • Melbourne Writers Festival (Schools Program) - 27 and 29 August 2007 - presenting with Shaun Tan and with Eddie Campbell
  • Launch of The Great Gatsby - 6 September 2007
  • Brisbane Writers Festival 12 to 16 September 2007 - various presentations
  • This Is Not Art - Young Writers Festival (Newcastle) 27 to 1 October 2007 - program

On a more personal note, something that made me do somersaults of joy (figuratively speaking): last week I received a beautiful card from a member of F. Scott Fitzgerald's family, saying lovely things about the book in general, and in particular about my interpretation of Daisy. Hard to describe how thrilling this is for me. Daisy is my favourite character, of course. And I'm just so glad that my adaptation was seen to be a fitting tribute to the original novel.

Meanwhile, work continues on the equally enormous Hamlet adaptation. Not quite ready to be posting images online, but I'm 90 pages into the roughs, and enjoying it a great deal.

Recently, friends have been pointing me in the direction of other comic art adaptations of Shakespeare, which is fascinating. Each one that I've seen so far has taken a completely different approach, and I'm happy to say that mine will be very different again. The one that excites me most is King Lear, adapted and illustrated by Ian Pollock - I'm eagerly awaiting my copy purchased on e-Bay. It looks spectacular - surreal and grotesque and beautifully coloured. So, thank you to Eddie Campbell (check out his excellent blog) who put me onto this book, and to Publicist Extraordinaire Renee Senogles who just sent me an Australian adaptation of MacBeth.

And up the top of this post is a little image to go on with - something I painted with Hamlet in mind. The idea here is to suggest Tiffany glass, Gaudi's trencadis (broken) tilework and big, imposing Norman pillars and arches. A weird mixture, I think.

8 comments:

Johanna GGG said...

Hi Nicki - welcome to the blogosphere - I am excited about being able to see lots of your cool pics on here - and that is fantastic that gatsby is so close to being launched, and has been endorsed by scott fitzgerald's family!

Nicki Greenberg said...

Thanks Jo! Really pleased you like it. I think this blogging lurk should be fun.

x Nicki

spacedlaw said...

Hello, Nicky.
I am really excited to finally see a few images of that book.
Looking forward to its availablity on my side of the world.
Nathalie

Nicki Greenberg said...

Hi Nathalie

With all the many, many benefits of being in Rome (you lucky creature!), unfortunately getting hold of this book is not one of them. Because of copyright issues, it isn't available in Europe at this stage. But give it time....!

Really like the pictures on your blog too.

Nicki

Anonymous said...

I'm gonna have to get me a copy of the Lear....

Website looks very nice indeed.

spacedlaw said...

http://eddiecampbell.blogspot.com/2007/08/gre-t-gatsb-y-first-time-i-saw-nicki.html

scootergrrl said...

Hi Nicki

Great blog and website!

Eagerly awaiting the launch :)

Cheers,
Scoots

Nicki Greenberg said...

Thanks Scootergrrrl.

Your blog is fabulous! I just took a sneak peek. Loved the piece about Unpolished Gem / Yell-Oh musings... I'm looking forward to reading more (when I'm not at work).

Cheers
Nicki