Words and Pictures

  Carol Lay has been creating comics — both alternative and mainstream — since the 1980’s.  She’s a writer, illustrator, painter, and animator whose work ranges from surrealist canvases to Wonder Woman story arcs.  Her weekly comic Story Minute ran in newspapers for twenty... Read more

  Stan Mack is one of the original comics journalists.  In the 1970's he left a steady job as Art Director of the New York Times Sunday Magazine to blaze a trail in the world of alternative comics.  His documentary-style strip Stan Mack's Real-Life Funnies chronicled the d... Read more

  Lynda Barry calls herself "an accidental professor," but she began her career as an accidental cartoonist in the 1970's, when Evergreen State College classmate Matt Groening published her comics in the school paper without her knowledge.  Barry's weekly strip Ernie Pook'... Read more

  Jan Eliot got her start in the 1970's drawing for alternative newspapers in and around Eugene, Oregon, her weekly comic strips Patience and Sarah and Sister City focusing on the then-novel (for the funny pages) concepts of single moms and blended families.  In the 1990's... Read more

  During the presidential campaign of 2008, Weather Underground co-founder and Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers teamed up with cartoonist Ryan Alexander-Tanner to adapt Bill's groundbreaking education textbook into comics form.  The result is To Teach: The J... Read more

  Rapper, cartoonist, and social activist Keith Knight is a longtime fan of the Portland comics scene as well as community radio.  He was delighted to make a detour to the KBOO studios during his visit to the 2006 Stumptown Comics Festival, where his slideshow and stage pe... Read more

  For half a century, Bruce Bickford ran a one-man clay animation production house, constructing surreal miniature worlds in a cavernous Seattle studio and bringing them to life through the magic of stop-motion.  Bickford gained notoriety in the 1970's as the fertile mind ... Read more

  Shary Flenniken is one of the most influential figures in the history of underground comics.  Her comic Trots & Bonnie burst onto the pages of the National Lampoon in the early 1970's, and with its mix of radical politics, coy sexuality, absurd situations, approachable ... Read more

  Marjane Satrapi is the artist and writer behind such graphic memoirs as Persepolis, Embroideries, and Chicken with Plums, and is the co-director of the animated feature film version of Persepolis.  She grew up in Tehran during the revolution that toppled the Shah and led... Read more

  In this encore episode of Words and Pictures, we welcome fimmaker Gus Van Sant, whose directorial work has ranged from the avant-garde (Gerry and Last Days) to the transgressive (Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy) to Hollywood crowd-pleasers (Good Will Hunting and Finding ... Read more