MIMI'S DONUTS Wins Xeric Award

Congratulations to fellow New Hampshire cartoonist Marek Bennett upon his win of the prestigious Xeric Award for independent self-publishers.

"MIMI'S DOUGHNUTS" WINS XERIC AWARD
Prestigious Self-Publishing Grant Goes to New Hampshire Comic Strip

Henniker, New Hampshire -- The weekly comic strip "Mimi's Doughnuts" has won a coveted Xeric Grant for comic book self-publishing. With this award, creator Marek Bennett will self-publish a trade paperback anthology of the past four years of his comics.

The Xeric-funded anthology, entitled "Breakfast at Mimi's Doughnuts," will collect the best of the strip's first 200 episodes, plus several pages of original artwork and special features. Bennett plans to release the collection in Spring of 2009.

"Mimi's Doughnuts" follows the lives of an extended family that runs a small neighborhood doughnut shop in fictional Claymont, New Hampshire. Bennett bases the strip loosely on his wife's childhood growing up at family doughnut shops and diners in Claremont, New Hampshire.

"The characters and stories are mixtures of people and places we've known, people and issues I encounter in my teaching, and new ideas that come up every day," says Bennett. "It's the perfect setting to address so many of the issues facing small towns all over our country today."

Past storylines use humor to deal with serious topics like diet, politics, littering, real estate development, lung cancer, domestic abuse, and global warming. Often, real-life stories and adventures find their way into Bennett's comics. In 2007, while Bennett's family rescued over 30 stray kittens from an abandoned house in Henniker, his comic strip characters found themselves also rescuing feral cats.

Bennett has drawn "Mimi's Doughnuts" since 2003.

The strip currently appears weekly in New Hampshire and Vermont newspapers. Bennett also offers quarterly mail-order "zines" of his comics, with subscriptions available at his website. Bennett's popular Comics Workshop programs for elementary- and teenaged artists run all Summer long at several locations in New Hampshire. For more information, visit Bennett's website at: www.marekbennett.com

The Xeric Foundation of Northampton, Massachussetts, supports independent self-publishers in the comics industry through competitive grant programs. The Foundation was established by Peter Laird, co-creator of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." For more information, visit: http://xericfoundation.org