There’s still time for you to support independent publisher Avery Hill’s Kickstarter for a brand new UK edition of Tillie Walden‘s acclaimed, award-winning memoir, Spinning, featuring an all-new cover design and luxurious hardback binding.
Fans of Avery Hill’s terrific line of often thought-provoking, beautifully presented books will know Tillie as one of their longest-standing collaborators, who have published five books with the publisher, from her very first graphic novel The End of Summer in 2015, On A Sunbeam in 2018, to the acclaimed collection Alone in Space in 2021.
A competitive figure skater for twelve years, every day was the same for Tillie Walden. Sports, school, and family, with no chance for her to stop and think. But when Tillie met her first girlfriend, it changed her whole life. She broke out of the reinforced sameness of a routine into a new relationship and a new interest in making art. She began to be sure her life should be different.
Check out Avery Hill’s crowdfunding campaign for Spinning here
Spinning, previously published by SelfMadeHero, which won the Eisner Award for best reality-based work in 2018, is a poignant, honest autobiographical graphic novel about realising you can reinvent your life. It’s been described as “a coming-of-age classic” by The Guardian, and “an engrossing, gorgeously quiet memoir” by The New York Times.
In addition to the new 400-page edition of Spinning, bonus items for backers include a set of A5 bookplates featuring line art by Tillie based on the book, numbered and signed by the author. (Backers have already snapped up the limited number of copies available signed and sketched-in by Tillie).
Bundles of Tillie’s previous graphic novels published by Avery Hill are also on offer.
• Check out Avery Hill’s crowdfunding campaign for Spinning here
Tillie talks Spinning
Tillie Walden is a cartoonist and illustrator from Austin, Texas. Her gorgeously illustrated, deeply personal graphic novels have won the Eisner Award and the LA Times Book Prize. She teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies and lives in Vermont, where she is the state Cartoonist Laureate.
“Ice skating was never particularly what inspired this book,” Tillie said of Spinning when it was first released in 2017, in an interview for Entertainment Weekly. “And honestly, I never thought I would do this. This wasn’t a story I’ve always wanted to tell. Basically what happened is that for a school project, I thought I’d make a short comic about skating because I couldn’t come up with any other ideas, and it seemed like an easy pass through the project. But when I tried to make it, I completely froze. I couldn’t draw myself skating. It may sound silly, but I honestly didn’t realize I had so much baggage with ice skating until then. And that was when I decided to take this subject further into a book; to try and understand why I couldn’t draw myself skating.”
For more about Tillie’s skating experiences and creating Spinning, Comics Beat has a two-part fantastic interview here and here with the author about the project, her creative process, and her experience of homophobia growing up.
A Publishing Success Story
Avery Hill is an independent publishing company based in London that helps aspiring creators reach their potential and is a home to the geniuses that the mainstream has yet to recognise. Their canon includes psychogeographical mappings, eco-anarchist wizards, boat-shaped coffins, a bad canine named Greasy, and much more.
The company was founded by Ricky Miller and Dave White, who’d known each other since the age of 11. They started out self-publishing zines and quickly moved on to publishing anthologies and then books by creators whose work they admired. In 2015 Katriona Chapman joined the team, and that year Avery Hill also published their first book by Tillie Walden who would go on to take the world of comics by storm.
Avery Hill books have won Eisner and Ignatz awards, and Avery Hill themselves have been nominated as best publisher in the Broken Frontier Awards for seven years running (winning three times, and last year winning the Hall of Fame Award!)
“We hope you’ll back us in this campaign,” ask the team, “and help us continue to bring interesting and unusual books into the world and support the work of the creators we believe in.”
• Check out Avery Hill’s crowdfunding campaign for Spinning here
• You can get prints of Tillie’s art here, and merchandise from her Threadless Store
• Sign up for Tillie’s mailing list to get updates about her comics | Follow Tillie on Instagram
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Comics, Creating Comics, Crowd Funding Projects, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
