ONLINE: Alison Bechdel

You’re a certain age if you remember Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking cartoon strip featuring a cast of smart and funny lesbians who would have been right at home on, say, Dunning Street. Bechdel has moved on to literary and theatrical fame with her graphic memoir/musical Fun Home; now she’s back with another graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, which takes on the American obsession with fitness crazes. She’ll be discussing the new book with Cheryl Strayed (Wild) in a livestream event hosted by the Wisconsin Book Festival and partners Literary Arts (Portland, Oregon), The Loft (Minneapolis), and Black Mountain Institute (Las Vegas). Register here (and check out Stu Levitan's interview with Bechdel for the May 3 episode of Madison Book Beat in the WORT-FM Archive).

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Elena Seibert

"Dykes to Watch Out For" comic creator and graphic novelist Alison Bechdel.

media release: Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

Copies of The Secret to Superhuman Strength will be distributed for free to the first 150 attendees who reserve a copy. During the event, there will be a link to claim your book. Simply fill out the form and a book will be sent to you from one of our partnering bookstores. 

Alison Bechdel's cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical, and Are You My Mother?  Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, among many other honors.