Aimée de Jongh, Chris W. Kim and Paolo Bacilieri join SelfMadeHero at TCAF

This weekend, we jet off to Canada for one of the highlights of our year: the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. With guests including Jillian Tamaki, Pénélope Bagieu and Dave McKean, this year’s show looks like it’ll be as good as ever. What’s more, there’ll be three very special SelfMadeHero creators in attendance: Paolo Bacilieri (FUN), Aimée de Jongh (The Return of the Honey Buzzard) and Chris W. Kim (Herman by Trade). They’ll be signing books on SelfMadeHero’s booth in the Toronto Reference Library throughout the weekend, as well as taking part in some intriguing, star-studded events.

Paolo Bacilieri kicks things off with two pre-festival events:

On Thursday 11 May, he’ll speak alongside Marcelino Truong and Martina Schradi at the Alliance Française (24 Spadina Road, Toronto). The panel, organised in partnership with EUNIC, kicks off at 19:30 and is free to attend. The discussion will be moderated by Lars von Toerne, a journalist for Der Tagesspiegel. Full details are available here.

On Friday 12 May, an exhibition of Bacilieri’s work opens around the corner, at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (496 Huron Street, Toronto). The exhibition comprises 30 original illustrations from FUN, as well as 20 more from his previous graphic novels La Magnifica Desolazione and Sweet Salgari. This is not to be missed. Details here.

On Saturday 13 May, Aimée de Jongh joins Emma Ríos, Christine Wong, David White and Akihide Yanagi for a discussion of what it takes to build a comics community (“Making a Scene”, 11:00-­12:00, The Pilot, 22 Cumberland Street).

And shortly after that, as part of the festival’s Canadian Reading Series, Chris W. Kim joins comics giant Seth and Pope Hats author Ethan Rilly as they read from their latest comics masterpieces (“Alt Canada”, 12:15-13:15, Hinton Learning Theatre, Toronto Reference Library).

And, finally, on Sunday 14 May, Paolo Bacilieri is back in action, talking alongside Box Brown, Pénélope Bagieu and Joe Ollmann on a panel focussing on the joys, pitfalls and frustrations of telling real-life stories (“Telling Other People’s Stories”, 13:30-14:30, Learning Centre, Toronto Reference Library).

What more could you want? Well, actually, there’s quite a lot more: check out the full TCAF programme here.