Medically Graphic

Tomorrow night I'm catching a red-eye flight from San Francisco to Baltimore (via Chicago) for the Fifth Annual International Comics & Medicine Conference. I attended the first, helped organize the second and third, and missed the fourth. Now it's off to Johns Hopkins to reunite with old friends and, I'm sure, make a few new ones.

These conferences are terrific! Here's a link to some posts about my previous trips to London, Chicago and Toronto, plus another conference organized by a different group last year in Riverside, Calif. Doctors, nurses, professors, students, and cartoonists get together and actually have a lot to talk about--using comics to tell patients' stories, caregivers' stories, medical professionals' stories . . . convey public health information . . . relate experiences in ways other media can't. 

"Graphic medicine" is a small niche of comics and a small niche of medicine, but it's getting more attention in both realms, including articles in prestigious medical journals. It's been extraordinarily gratifying to be in on the ground floor of it.

I'm scheduled to give a 5-minute "lightning talk" on "Ten Years of Mom's Cancer," then a 90-minute hands-on workshop titled "See One, Do One, Teach One" to show people how to make comics. I'll also be moderating one panel discussion because nobody better was available. 

Looking forward to the conference; not looking forward to the flight. Lots of photos and probably a couple of stories when I get back.