Home in the Last Place You Look: Modified & Makeshift Worlds

Garth Stein is a New York Times-bestselling author, filmmaker and playwright. He is the author of several plays and four novels. His book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, has sold over six million copies worldwide, been produced as a stage play, children’s book, and a film. Matthew Southworth is a comic artist and writer. He is the co-creator (with Greg Rucka) of the comic book series Stumptown, as well as an Executive Producer of ABC’s Stumptown TV series.The Cloven Book One (Fantagraphics) stars James Tucker, the most successful Genetically Modified Human Organism ever created. Conceived in a privately financed, top-secret laboratory on Washington state’s Vashon Island, Tucker is a cross between a human and a goat — a Cloven. All “Tuck” wants is to live a normal life as a university student; everything is going fine, until he shows a girl his hooves. Book One follows Tuck’s journey across the Pacific Northwest as he searches for his true home out there somewhere. It is the first of a raucous, funny, fast-moving, and dynamic series of graphic novels. Neal Bascomb, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter Fortress and Faste has cheered Book One as “riveting — a delightful modern-day twist on the Frankenstein story. The writing is stylistically dark; the art is vivid and strikingly beautiful.  Stein and Southworth have created a masterful and unique world.”

Chris Gooch is a cartoonist. Having published many short comics, his previous graphic novels are Bottled and Deep Breaths. Under-Earth (IDW Publishing) is a graphic novel about inmates in an underground prison struggling to build meaningful lives in a broken system. Under-Earth takes place in a subterranean landfill, hollowed out to serve as a massive improvised prison. Sunken into the trash and debris of the past — Gameboys, iPhones, coffee cups, old cars — we follow two parallel stories. In the first, a new arrival struggles to adapt to the everyday violence, physical labor, and poverty of the prison city. Overwhelmed and alone, he finds a connection with a fellow inmate through an old, beat-up novel. Meanwhile, a pair of thieves pull off a risky job in exchange for the prisons’ schematics and the promise of escape — only to be betrayed by their employer. As the two women lay their plans for revenge, their focus shifts from an obsession with the outside world to the life they have with each other.

Matthew Southworth is a comic artist and writer. He is the co-creator (with Greg Rucka) of the comic book series Stumptown, as well as an Executive Producer of ABC’s Stumptown TV series. Garth Stein is a New York Times-bestselling author, filmmaker and playwright. He is the author of several plays and four novels. His book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, has sold over six million copies worldwide, been produced as a stage play, children’s book, and a film. The Cloven Book One (Fantagraphics) stars James Tucker, the most successful Genetically Modified Human Organism ever created. Conceived in a privately financed, top-secret laboratory on Washington state’s Vashon Island, Tucker is a cross between a human and a goat — a Cloven. All “Tuck” wants is to live a normal life as a university student; everything is going fine, until he shows a girl his hooves. Book One follows Tuck’s journey across the Pacific Northwest as he searches for his true home out there somewhere. It is the first of a raucous, funny, fast-moving, and dynamic series of graphic novels. Neal Bascomb, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter Fortress and Faste has cheered Book One as “riveting — a delightful modern-day twist on the Frankenstein story. The writing is stylistically dark; the art is vivid and strikingly beautiful.  Stein and Southworth have created a masterful and unique world.”