Join us on June 15, 2023 6pm at 2nd Street Napa Bookmine for an evening with Julia Wertz the author of Impossible People.
Questions? email us at Events@napabookmine.com
ABOUT THE BOOK
IN HER KEENLY OBSERVED GRAPHIC MEMOIR IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE CELEBRATED CARTOONIST JULIA WERTZ CHRONICLES HER HAPHAZARD ATTEMPTS AT SOBRIETY AND THE RELENTLESSLY CHALLENGING, OCCASIONALLY ABSURD, AND SURPRISINGLY FUNNY CYCLE OF ADDICTION AND RECOVERY
Opening at the culmination of a disastrous trip to Puerto Rico, the first page of Impossible People finds Julia standing stupefied in the middle of the jungle beside a rental Jeep she's just crashed. From this moment, the story flashes back to the beginning of her five-year journey toward sobriety that includes group therapy sessions, relapses, an ill-fated relationship, terrible dates, and an unceremonious eviction from her New York City apartment. Far from the typical addiction narrative that follows an upward trajectory from rock bottom to rehab to recovery, Impossible People portrays the lesser told but more common story: that the road to recovery is not always linear. With unflinching honesty, Wertz details the arduous, frustrating, and hilarious story of trying and failing and trying again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Wertz is a professional cartoonist, amateur historian, and part-time urban explorer. She made the comic books The Fart Party vol 1 and vol 2 (collected in Museum of Mistakes) and the graphic novels Drinking at the Movies, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, Tenements, Towers, & Trash, (for which she won the 2018 Brendan Gill Prize), and Impossible People (out 5/9/2023). She does monthly short story comics for the New Yorker and her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Believer, the Best American Comics, and other publications. Her photography of abandoned places has appeared in a handful of newspapers. She is a repeated MacDowell fellow. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she spent a decade in New York City before settling in Sonoma County, CA, with her partner Oliver (yeah, the Oliver from Fart Party) and their son Felix. She’s currently working on the graphic novel Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here)to be released by Hachette/Black Dog & Leventhal in 2025.
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In her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery.