Solas Nua, in partnership with Drawn & Quarterly and Georgetown Global Irish Studies, presents:
Luke Healy
on tour for the launch of his 2024 graphic novel,
Self-Esteem and the End of the World
Solas Nua is thrilled to announce that we are bringing Luke Healy, featured graphic novelist in our 2024 Irish Book Day giveaway on March 17th, to Washington DC and beyond this September for a multi-city tour along the East Coast celebrating the recent launch of his latest work, Self-Esteem and the End of the World.
Beginning in Philadelphia, Luke Healy will be a featured artist at the Partners and Son comic shop (618 S 6th St, Philadelphia, PA 19147) 5th anniversary party on Friday, September 13th, where he will be signing copies of his new book. You can meet Luke between 5pm and 6pm there.
Next, he will be in attendance at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, MD on Saturday, September 14th and Sunday, September 15th. The SPX festival will be held at Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center (5701 Marinelli Road Rockville, Maryland 20852). Tickets cost $20 to attend Saturday, $15 to attend Sunday, and $30 for both days. Tickets to SPX can be bought online ahead of time and will also be sold at the door.
Luke will participate in a panel titled 'The Pitfalls Of Time Travel' at 1pm on Sunday, September 15th at the White Flint Amphitheater. Read more about Luke's panel and the other SPX programming here. During both days of the festival, Luke will be available for book signings at Drawn & Quarterly booth W80-W83.
Solas Nua and Georgetown Global Irish Studies are also proud to present Luke Healy in a public conversation panel event with Fantom Comics owner, Jacob Shapiro, in Washington DC on Monday, September 16th at 7pm. This talkback will take place at NYU DC (1307 L St NW, Washington, DC 20005). This event is free to attend, but reservations are required. All in-person attendants will also receive a complimentary copy of Healy's acclaimed graphic novel, The Con Artists.
This event is generously supported by Culture Ireland.
Register to attend the September 16th Solas Nua & Georgetown Global Irish Studies event at NYU DC using the links below:
Purchase tickets to see Luke at the Small Press Expo 2024:
Self-Esteem and the End of the World by Luke Healy
Life is not a race. There are no winners and losers. Immeasurable people are doing better than you…immeasurably worse. You are statistically average.
For over ten years, fictional Luke Healy has invested all of his self-esteem into his career. But two years post publication of his latest book, and suffering the blow of his twin-brother not finding him fit to act as best man, both Luke’s career and self-esteem seem to have disintegrated.
Set against the backdrop of a dangerously changing global climate, with melting ice-caps and flooding cities, Self-Esteem and the End of the World spans two decades of tragicomic self-discovery. From discussing self-help books like Marie Kondo’s with the guy you invited over for sex, to summiting a Greek mountaintop while pretending to be working remotely, and a workplace destination murder mystery to a Hollywood revival of Luke’s early work, we see our protagonist grappling with his identity as the world crumbles.
Quietly funny, smartly introspective, and grounded in deeply-felt familial highs and lows, Self-Esteem and the End of the World ponders what happens when the person you are isn’t who you need to be, who you are when nobody’s watching, and ultimately, who can you possibly be at the end of the world?
PRAISE FOR LUKE HEALY
“Luke Healy stumbles through the elegantly drawn frames of Self-Esteem and the End of the World like a gay millennial Harvey Pekar, asking himself the questions currently dogging an entire generation: How can we save the Earth? How can we survive late-stage capitalism? And most importantly: How can we love ourselves? What makes Healy such a joy to read is his canny awareness that these questions aren’t easily answered through pithy self-help psychobabble, nor even through finally getting all the things we want. The answers are lived, not spoken, and look more like having a heart-to-heart with your mam at a crime scene or caring for an AI whale with a glitching fin: in other words, the messy, confounding, lovely business of being human in extraordinary times."―Rafel Frumkin, author of Confidence
“Full of unexpected laughs; at once both absurd and sincere."—Sophie Yanow, author of The Contradictions
"Enhanced with a philosophical chorus of mice, seagulls, and cleverly inserted extras... Healy produces a poignant graphic meditation on grasping identity amid relentless unpredictability."—Booklist
“Full of deadpan humour… a deeply felt exploration of happiness, trust and the lies we tell our friends and ourselves."―The Guardian Best Graphic Novels of 2022
“The Con Artists feels like a tender little indie film—about friendship and trust between twenty-somethings floundering for whatever it takes to survive into their thirties.”—The Stranger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luke Healy was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, where he also received a BA in Journalism. He has an MFA from the Centre for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, USA. Besides his most recent work, Self-Esteem and the End of the World, he has also published four other graphic novels: The Con Artists, Americana (And the Act of Getting Over It), How to Survive in the North, and Permanent Press. Healy’s work has been exhibited in the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art in Manhattan and his clients include The New Yorker, BBC, Vice, and Narratively.
