Words and Pictures

  Douglas Wolk is an award-winning journalist, author, and pop-culture critic who's written about comics and music for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and The Nation.  His books include James Brown's Live at the Apollo and Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels... Read more

  Mike Konopacki is a longtime labor cartoonist who collaborated with historians Howard Zinn and Paul Buhle to adapt Zinn's book A People’s History of the United States into comics form. Konopacki joined S.W. Conser in July of 2008 to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the... Read more

  In October of 2010, political cartoonists Ted Rall and Matt Bors joined S.W. Conser in the KBOO studios for a live interview about the unembedded fact-finding trip they took through Afghanistan two months earlier.  Due to time constraints, many of their additional storie... Read more

  Derf Backderf is the author of multiple graphic novels, including My Friend Dahmer, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, Trashed, and the Eisner-award-winning Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio.  His alternative comic The City ran in over 75 weekly newspapers for 25 years, and his bo... Read more

  Editorial cartoons are often the most popular feature on the newspaper page, but with print publications battered by the left-right punch of the internet and vulture capital, more and more political cartoonists find themselves wandering in a media wilderness. Enter Coun... Read more

  Spain Rodriguez was one of the most prolific and visionary members of the underground cartoonist movement in the 1960’s and 70’s.  He covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention for the newspaper The East Village Other, he ran with the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club, ... Read more

  John McAfee was a computer programmer and businessman who created the first commercial anti-virus software in the 1980’s.  A few years later, he stepped down from his own company, a multi-millionaire.  In the decades that followed, his adventures — and misadventures — gr... Read more

  Artist, author, professor and creative coach Jessica Abel visited Portland in 2006 for the second annual Wordstock Literary Festival, where she unveiled her epic graphic novel La Perdida.  Jessica took the time to sit down with Bill Dodge and S.W. Conser to muse about yo... Read more

  One of the lifelines to local artists in difficult times is the Oregon Arts Commission.  They've been helping arrange grants to artists and arts organizations for over half a century.  And one of those many grants is the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, awarded in collabora... Read more

  In this extended conversation about filmmaking in the Pacific Northwest, we spend an extra 20 minutes with three local activists who have worked for years to boost the independent film production and exhibition scene in Oregon. Tim Williams is the Executive Director of ... Read more