Kinokuniya presents a book-signing and sketches by artists/authors Yumi Sakugawa and Marinaomi on Saturday, Jan. 24, from 1 to 3 p.m. at its Little Tokyo store in Weller Court, 123 Astronaut E.S. Onizuka St., Los Angeles.
The event is free and open to the public.
Sakugawa is a comic book artist and illustrator based in Southern California. She is a regular online contributor to The Rumpus and Wonderhowto. She is the author of “Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe” and “I Think I Am in Friend-Love with You,” based on the web comic of the same name. Both books are published by Adams Media.
Huffington Post Books described “Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe” as “a beautifully illustrated comic…. Yumi Sakugawa has used her spare, sweet and lightly melancholic illustrations to address a number of uniquely contemporary phenomena…. Sakugawa’s style is so evocative that it’s likely to make its reader forget any reservations he or she has about the mantras packaged within it.”
Bitch Magazine had this to say about “I Think I Am in Friend-Love with You”: “Yumi Sakugawa’s small, sweet hardcover … feels so necessary. Sakugawa’s one-eyed, vaguely sock-like protagonist fantasizes a future of book-swapping, Tumblr post–reblogging, coffee-sipping platonic love, but reveals the most simple of needs in the book’s simple black-and-white illustrations.”
On the Web: www.yumisakugawa.com
MariNaomi is the author and illustrator of the award-winning graphic memoir “Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22” (Harper Perennial, 2011), “Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories” (2D Cloud/Uncivilized Books, 2014), the upcoming book “Turning Japanese” (2D Cloud, 2015), and her self-published Estrus Comics (1998 to 2009).
Her work has appeared in over 50 anthologies, including “I Saw You: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections,” “Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women,” Eisner-nominated “No Straight Lines,” Ignatz winner “QU33R,” and Action Girl Comics. Her comics and essays have been featured on The Rumpus, The Weeklings, LA Review of Books, Midnight Breakfast, Truth-out, SFBay.CA, The Comics Journal, The Bay Citizen, XOJane and more. Her work on The Rumpus won a SPACE award and an honorable mention in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2013.
MariNaomi’s artwork has been featured in such venues as the De Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Cartoon Art Museum, and Asian Art Museum, all in San Francisco, and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. In 2011, she toured with the literary roadshow Sister Spit. She splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
On the Web: http://marinaomi.com