Folio

How are Australian comics made and read? How do changes in comics and graphic storytelling over the past forty years intersect with our changing ideas about history, culture, community, creativity and technology? 

In  Folio: Essays on Australian Comics , interdisciplinary scholars and world-leading makers pose questions about Australian comics, including through visual essays, asking how comics move out into community, industry, society, and disciplines both cognate and distant. 

It first examines the  cultures and communities  of Australian comics, from Indigenous cultural contexts to DIY zine fairs, and international markets to the graphic recording industry. It then focuses on  practices and readings  of individual comics, exploring individual practices and analysing Australian work, from government-commissioned comics with explicit social purpose to comics that employ augmented reality.

Ronnie Scott is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at RMIT University, where he co-convenes an intervarsity comics studies reading group. His books include the Penguin Special  Salad Days  and the novels  The Adversary ,  Shirley  and  Letter to a Fortunate Ex .

Elizabeth MacFarlane is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. She is co-director of Twelve Panels Press and co-directed the Comic Art Workshop from 2015 to 2019. Her books include  Reading Coetzee  and  Superhero Bodies :  Identity, Materiality, Transformation  (co-editor) .  Her monograph  Comics and Creativity: Reading and Making Graphic Narratives  is forthcoming with Bloomsbury.

Gabriel Clark is Senior Lecturer in the School of Design at UTS, where he researches and teaches multimodal storytelling. As a Creative Producer, he develops innovative and award-winning graphic storytelling projects. 

Pat Grant is Lecturer in Media Arts and Production at UTS. His graphic novel  Blue  was listed as one of the great graphic novels of 2012 by the US culture journal  Salon . His 2020 graphic novel  The Grot  was in the official selection list of the 2021 Angouleme Comics Festival.

Meg O'Shea is a comics-maker featured in anthologies including  Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival,  which won the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Anthology.