Marek Bennett May Be Coming to Your Town!

Fellow New Hampshire cartoonist/educator Marek Bennett is going to be doing a lot this summer. Below is his press release. (Image from his "What We Do" blog entry.)

ARTIST-EDUCATOR MAREK BENNETT BRINGS COMICS TO CONVENTIONS AND CLASSROOMS

"Mimi's Doughnuts" Creator Releases New Comics and Music

Henniker, New Hampshire -- New Hampshire cartoonist and educator Marek Bennett has three new comics appearing this month, along with a convention appearance in New York City and an end-of-the-year school program in New Hampshire.

On June 7-8, Bennett will release issue #15 of his quarterly all-ages comics publication, Mimi's Doughnuts Zine, at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York City. Also launching at this year's MoCCA Art Festival are two anthologies bearing comics by Bennett:

Secrets and Lies, an anthology edited by webcomics artist Cayetano Garza, centered around the comics community of White River Junction's Center for Cartoon Studies.

Swingin' Hits, an anthology of original comics by creators in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Western Massachusetts, published by Trees and Hills Comics Group. The anthology's theme is "music", and it forms the centerpiece to Trees and Hills' "Spring Thaw" Tour. Bennett and other comics artists contributed original music to the anthology's soundtrack CD.

The annual festival, hosted by the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, celebrates independent comics publishers and small-press artists from around the world.

Following these releases, Bennett will lead a Comics Workshop in Marlow, NH, guiding elementary students in creating comics about influential teachers in their lives. The workshop is part of a retirement ceremony for veteran teachers in the school system.

Since 2002, Bennett has led summetime and school-year "Comics Workshop" education programs, teaching students of all ages how to harness the unlimited power of comics as an expressive and affordable medium for imaginative storytelling. This summer he will lead "Comics Camp" programs at several New Hampshire sites. He has taught at the Hopkinton Independent School since 2004, where he teaches Spanish, music, and middle school science. He recently received grant funding from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and AutoDesk Corporation to conduct a bilingual original comics exchange between school children in Henniker, NH, and San Ramon, Nicaragua in 2008-2009.

Bennett's comic, "Mimi's Doughnuts," is a weekly self-syndicated comic strip telling the story of a group of step-siblings growing up in a small-town family-run doughnut shop in the fictional town of Claymont, New Hampshire. Mimi's Doughnuts Zine is available by mail-order subscription; order individual copies and subscriptions online at: www.marekbennett.com.

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