Covid Comics with The Lancet
‘Comics of the COVID-19 pandemic are valuable contributions to the outbreak narrative and to the evolving visual culture of contagion. They can help us collectively process and understand this moment. The visual documentation of the pandemic in comics helps demystify the invisibility of contagion, creates personal narratives about the pandemic, provides public health education, and can create a sense of solidarity around shared emotions and experiences resulting from the disruptions to social interactions, bodily integrity, and communal boundaries.’
With a number of the Myriad novelists recording their daily antics while in lockdown, we were intrigued to read this article in world-leading medical health journal, The Lancet, on the value of Covid Comics. Read in full HERE.
Not the Wellcome Prize
Bookish Beck has announced that in place of the Wellcome Prize (which is taking a year off) she will be hosting a ‘Not the Wellcome Prize’ blog tour, featuring books which disseminate crucial information about medicine and/or tell stories about how health affects our daily lives. The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams features on the longlist, with the winner being announced on the 11th May.
Please join us in following Bookish Beck and her fellow judges as they delve into each of the longlisted titles.
Best Books of 2019 by Bookish Beck
Bookish Beck touts The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams as one of the Best Books of 2019.
‘Dr. Lois Pritchard works at a medical practice in small-town Wales and treats embarrassing ailments at a local genitourinary medicine clinic. The tone is wonderfully balanced: there are plenty of hilarious, somewhat raunchy scenes, but also a lot of heartfelt moments. The drawing style recalls Alison Bechdel’s.’
SEE FULL LIST
The Lady Doctor, Sussex Life 'Must Read'
The October issue of Sussex Life chooses The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams as a ‘must read’. Buy the graphic novel HERE.
Viva The Lady Doctor
Viva Brighton ran a double-spread feature on Ian Williams, his new graphic novel The Lady Doctor and the recent Graphic Medicine Conference, which took place in Brighton this weekend. Read in full HERE.
Comics Beat Interview: Graphic Medicine gets a clean bill of health from founder Ian Williams
Doctor and graphic novelist Ian Williams talks to Comics Beat about Graphic Medicine, the upcoming conference in Brighton and why comics are such a vital tool in supporting new ways of learning. Read the full interview HERE.
Do you have any sense of why the combination of medical topics and comics work so well together and why people appreciate it so much?
I guess loads of people like comics and you could argue that culture in general is becoming more visual and with comics having become a more respected form of art and literature over the last 20 years, I guess people are starting to look in that direction. And maybe because they’ve read comics when they were younger, it gives them a thrill to rediscover comics. People seem to just get really excited about the idea of using comics in healthcare or using comics as a therapeutic intervention.
As we’ve gained ground and it’s been taken up at an institutional level people have suddenly started to take it seriously. And thank god, graphic medicine has become a thing. Now you get loads of people saying, “oh, this is cool, I’ve just written a paper about something and I’d like to turn it into a comic book,” a lot of, which is really not suitable but people like the idea, they see it as being cool, I suppose. Also at the same time, big institutions like the Wellcome Trust in the UK and big research institutions have used comics in public engagement. So people see that and start to get it.
Top 10 Releases of 2019 by Bookish Beck
The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams is chosen by Bookish Beck as one of her ‘Top 10 Releases of 2019’. Read her review HERE.
The Lady Doctor – Ian Williams’ Tale of Rural Practice is All the More Affecting for the Fragile Humanity it Encapsulates
Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier shares The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams.
‘The Lady Doctor is a book of self-discovery as Lois comes to terms not just with who she is and who she has become but with the forces that shaped her too. There’s also an underlying anger here as well, though, as the strains of life on the GP frontlines are portrayed with a raw honesty and the spectre of the gradual destruction of the NHS looms large throughout. Social commentary is an integral part of Williams’ work, effectively wrapped up here in the trappings of everyday, slice-of-life storytelling.’
Read in full HERE.
Ian Williams, My Life in Books for Sussex Life
Ian Williams shares all sorts of book-related tidbits in ‘My Life in Books’, which features in Sussex Life, June 2019. Click on image to read in full.
The book that inspired me as a teenager…
‘Primo Levi’s The Wrench, although I’m not sure it inspired me in the right way. It’s about an itinerant rigger (an engineer who erects oil derricks and the like) who’s constantly on the move and loves and leaves. He’s a restless libertine and loner. I have finally – in my early 50s – had a child and got married. Enough said.’
Graphic Novels That Will Diagnose Your Disease by The New York Times
The Lady Doctor (Myriad, 2019) reviewed by Hillary Chute for The New York Times. ‘What makes this book fascinating is its sensitive portrayal of Lois’s interactions with a range of patients. In recurrent, wordless pages throughout, with his clean and fluid black line art, Williams illustrates the rhythm of Lois’s professional routine through whom and what she encounters: an assortment of faces, body parts and affects streaming by in an even staccato.
Podcast - Ian Williams on Resonance FM
Medicine, humour and the art of drawing stories. Ian Williams shares his new graphic novel, The Lady Doctor on Resonance.FM.
Hear the podcastThe Jester
Ian featured in The Jester, March 2019.
Comicbook of the Month
The Lady Doctor was chosen as ‘Comicbook of the Month’ by Page 45 – who else?
Graphic Content: Comedy and tragedy in the NHS
‘As doctors we listen to people’s stories, we interpret and reconstruct their stories using our medical knowledge. People love medical stories, all of life is there.’
Read the full interview with Ian by Teddy Jamieson for Herald Scotland over on their website.
The Momus Questionnaire
‘OCD is not about being punctual or tidy: the clue is in the ‘disorder’ bit of the diagnosis.’ Ian discusses The Bad Doctor, The Lady Doctor and his irresistible charm in an interview with Minor Literatures. Read it online here.
Laughter is the Best Medicine—The Big Issue
The Lady Doctor featured in The Big Issue, including extracts from the graphic novel and a mini interview with Ian.
‘What are the hardest things you have to deal with as a GP?’
‘One of the hardest things currently is to do with mental health. It plays a big role as a GP. We see a lot of people who are very depressed and particularly children who are suffering – the services to send those people to are cut to the bone. Particularly teenagers who are suffering from self-harm – it’s very hard to get anybody to see them because the services are not adequately funded.’
Interview for The Doctor Paradox podcast
Listen to Ian Williams discussing The Bad Doctor and the artistic side of medicine, in this exclusive interview with California-based Dr. Paddy Barrett, curator of The Doctor Paradox website and podcast.
Ian Williams's article for the Independent
‘I remember, at medical school, drunken discussions concerning the small number of class “nutters” in our year of 150 students… I kept quiet, but laughed along with the others. I was convinced that I, too, was doomed to a future as a “nutter”, having developed some kind of “madness” that I was struggling to hide.’
Read more of Ian’s article for the Independent in which he discusses his experience of OCD and how this has informed his work.
Dr Ian Williams at LDComics
Ian Williams and fellow Myriad graphic novelist, Paula Knight, took part in graphics salon LDComics to discuss their respective graphic novels. Comic artist Jules Valera captured the event through various sketches and paintings, which you can see on her blog here.
Interview with Ian Williams for The Conversation
“The great thing about comics is that the medium itself is shot through with irony and self-reflexivity, so you can make a serious point, but then immediately undercut any suggestion of earnestness,” Ian Williams discusses graphic medicine with Emily Haworth-Booth for The Conversation. Read in full here.
The Independent view of Ian Williams's bookshelf
Feast your eyes on Ian’s personal bookshelf via The Independent. Includes titles such as Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, The Great War by Joe Sacco and Fran by Jim Woodring.