Author & Illustrator Carson Ellis in conversation with Lucy Bellwood on Saturday, October 12 from 6:00 - 7:00 pm
“Feels like reading a love story that doesn't quite know it's a love story yet, and a success story that doesn't know it’s made it.” —Emma Straub, New York Times–bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
In January 2001, the young artist Carson Ellis moved into a warehouse in Portland, Oregon, with a group of fellow artists. For the first week she lived there, she kept a detailed diary full of dry observations, mordant wit, hijinks with friends (including her future husband, Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy), and turn-of-the-millennium cultural touchstones.
After rediscovering an eight-page “droning catalog of my life at twenty-five, broke and unemployed, on the cusp of the digital age,” Ellis has richly illustrated this two-decade-old journal with extraordinary new paintings in the signature style that has made her an award-winning picture book author today. It renders her cohort’s messy interpersonal entanglements, including her romantic longing for her now-husband who “appear[ed] to be in love with everyone but her.” Ellis’s distinctive, colorful artwork fortifies the meticulous eye for detail also evident in her prose, with striking images of Meloy tuning his guitar and the bar next door to their rented warehouse elevating the material. This snapshot of a struggling artist will captivate restless creatives of all stripes.
Carson Ellis is the author and illustrator of the bestselling picture books Home and Du Iz Tak? (a Caldecott Honor book and the recipient of an E.B. White Read Aloud Award). She has illustrated a number of books for kids including The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket, and The Wildwood Chronicles by her husband, Colin Meloy. Carson has been awarded silver medals by the Society of Illustrators for her work on Wildwood Imperium and on Dillweed's Revenge by Florence Parry Heide. She's the illustrator-in-residence for Colin's band, The Decemberists, and received Grammy nominations in 2016 and 2018 for album art design. She works sporadically as an editorial illustrator for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications and exhibits art on occasion. Carson lives on a farm in Oregon with Colin, their two sons, three cats, three llamas, two goats, many chickens, and an unfathomable multitude of tree frogs.
Lucy Bellwood is a professional Adventure Cartoonist based in Ojai, CA. Her documented expeditions include rafting trips through the Grand Canyon, cutting-edge oceanography in the Pacific, and an expedition aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world. Her talks and essays explore the intersections of community, authenticity, and financial sustainability for creators. She is the author of Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea, an educational memoir about her time working aboard tall ships, and 100 Demon Dialogues, a helpful guide to living with imposter syndrome.
The conversation doesn’t need to end when our event does! Enjoy a free glass of wine at Sam's Place when you buy a book after our event. Stroll from our courtyard to theirs, located next to the tunnel between Ojai Avenue and the Arcade Plaza.
