Tag: interview

Comics Censorship Crises Past, Present, and Future – an Inside Look at CBLDF

Last week Adam Adler from Escapist Magazine sat down with Comic book Legal Defense Fund’s Executive Director Charles Brownstein to talk about censorship in comics, both the history and the current crises. Escapist is a journalistic take on an amalgam…

Takeshi Nogami: Defending Manga

​​ Interview By Charles Brownstein, translated by Dan Kanemitsu Last year, members of the international manga community found themselves on the defensive after BBC journalist Stacey Dooley broadcast the documentary “Young Sex For Sale In Japan,” which advocated that Japan…

Queer Comics Struggles, History, and Emergence: an Interview with Justin Hall

Justin Hall, who brought together the elegant and poignant queer comics anthology, No Straight Lines has been working on a new documentary by the same name with Peabody Award-winning director, Vivian Kleinman. The documentary is set to follow several groundbreaking LBGTQ…

Reading Without Walls: A Conversation with Gene Luen Yang

This month, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang officially ushers in the permanent annual version of his Reading Without Walls challenge. Recently Yang sat down with CBLDF Editorial Director Betsy Gomez to talk about the challenge and the importance…

Podcast: Censorship Can Happen to Anyone

In the latest edition of the American Libraries Dewey Decibel Podcast, Phil Morehart led ALA director James LaRue, school librarian Sara Stevenson, and acclaimed author Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) in a discussion of the tough topic of censorship in American schools and libraries. None of…

Gene Yang on “Reading Without Walls”

Since being selected as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, comics creator Gene Luen Yang has hit the ground running, encouraging young readers to break out of their literary comfort zone to explore “Reading Without Walls.” In a recent interview…

Brownstein Featured on Products of the Mind Podcast

This week, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein sat down with business law strategist David Lizerbram for the latest episode of the Products of the Mind podcast. In the 50-minute interview, the two discuss Brownstein’s comics background, landmark free-speech cases, book…

Chinese Cartoonist Speaks Out About Censorship

For over a year, Chinese cartoonist Wang Liming (best known as Rebel Pepper) has been living in exile in Japan after landing in hot water with the Chinese government for his subversive and highly controversial cartoons. In a recent interview…

Free Speech in a Connected World

In a recent sit-down with Index on Censorship, Timothy Garton Ash, author and professor of European Studies at Oxford University, talked about his new book Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World and the increasing need for freedom of expression…

Japanese Artist Rokudenashiko: “My Body is Not an Obscenity”

Japanese cartoonist Rokudenashiko recently celebrated the release of her new book What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy by challenging claims by the Japanese government that her art, and subsequently her body, is obscene. In…