Trees & Hills will have a table at the first-ever annual Vermont Small Press & Comic Fair at the Winooski Welcome Center & Gallery in downtown Winooski, VT on Saturday, March 24th, 2012, from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM. This event is a celebration of alternative publishing and an opportunity for the general public to meet artists & publishers and take in the rich and diverse landscape of alternative publishing in and around Vermont. The public will be invited to peruse vendors, attend talks and listen to live readings. The fair is open to DIY zine makers, illustrators, comic artists, book artists, graphic novelists, and independent publishers of every type.

To apply as a vendor, visit the Call to Vendors.

The Vermont Small Press & Comic Fair is organized by Kasini House and co-hosted by Gregory C. Giordano.

May 26 this year marks the second annual Mini-Comics Day, which encourages people to make a mini-comic in the span of a day. Last year, Glynnis Fawkes organized an event in Burlington, VT – let’s see how many we can have in our region this year! Drop us (and the Mini-Comics Day organizers!) a line if you’d like to organize an event in your area (here is some helpful information on hosting an event).

Looking for some anthologies to submit to this Spring? Obviously you should submit to the upcoming food-themed Trees & Hills anthology, Sprouts, by April 22. Once you’ve done that, try these!

• Funny Aminals 3: Hush (due March 28) – silent anthropomorphic animal comics, edited by Center For Cartoon Studies alumni Bryan Stone & Jeff Lok.
• The Greatest of All Time (due June 1) – stories about the greatest things of all time, edited by the Boston Comic Roundtable‘s Dan Mazur & Jesse Lonergan.
• Hellbound 3: Darkness (due June 15) – horror comics with the theme of “darkness,” edited by the Boston Comics Roundtable’s Jerel Dye & Kyle Anderson.

Make sure to read the submission guides carefully (I hear editors like that!) – and good luck!

Looking to table at some events this Spring? Try these!

• March 24 – Vermont Small Press & Comic Fair – Winooski, VT
• April 15 – Spring Zine Thing – Somerville, MA
• April 28-29 – MoCCA Festival – New York City, NY
• June 9 – Broke Affordable Arts Fair – Peterborough, NH
• June 12 – Granite State Comicon – Manchester, NH

Good luck this Spring!

The University of Massachusetts Amherst will show the documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of A Sequential Artist this Tuesday, March 6 (Eisner’s birthday) at 7:00 PM in Herter Hall Room 227. They will also show the short films “Ten Minutes” (a Spirit story) and “The Super” (a chapter from A Contract With God). Denis Kitchen will provide an introduction. The event is sponsored by the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and the Posen Foundation for the Study of Jewish Secularism, and is free, open to the public, and wheelchair-accessible. For more information, email judaic@judnea.umass.edu or call 413-545-2550. (Thanks to N.C. Christopher Couch for the tip!)

Come visit Trees & Hills at the Snow Day Celebration Gift & Craft Fair this Saturday, February 18 during the Ice & Snow Festival. Check out our comics and other local arts, crafts, food, and fun! Colin Tedford will be staffing the T&H table, and Anne Thalheimer will be selling her comics and monster hats. It’s at The Marriott Hotel, 72 Railroad Street in downtown Keene, NH from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM – see you there!

Our “Recent & Regional” sidebar feature (formerly “Blogs du Jour,” seen at right on the main page of the site) gathers blog post headlines from our regions’s cartoonists and other comics-related folk into one convenient place. The list of feeds it draws from had gotten terribly out of date, but I’ve just updated it – so feast on the wealth of news, thoughts, and art! I finally found a great plugin to replace Google Reader for the job, which will make it easier to keep the feed list up to date (and removed that annoying background display issue that happened to Reader). Who knows – the future might hold more overdue website refurbishing!

THEME:

The theme for the Spring 2012 Trees & Hills anthology is FOOD. As a sort of sequel to our 2008 food-themed anthology Seeds, the title is Sprouts.

CONTENT:

As with all our anthologies, we are most interested in both fiction and nonfiction comics with a community-minded orientation – comics that show an awareness of connection to the world around them and aim to make some sort of contribution to it, ideally with direct relevance to our region.

We will post some possible story ideas and links to resources soon.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Contributors should, of course, live in Vermont, New Hampshire, or western Massachusetts.
• Comics should be suitable for a general audience.
• Please let us know your story idea & approximate length as soon as possible (& let us know if you change your mind).
• Length: 1-6 pages. The printed page size will be 5.5” x 8.5”, image area around 5” x 8” – please proportion your comic accordingly.
• Send 600 dpi B&W .tif files (300 dpi OK if you need to use grayscale) to organize@treesandhills.org. Please use the format [last name]-[page number] for the filenames – for example Tedford-01.tif. You may also send clean photocopies to Trees & Hills, PO Box 645, Winchester, NH 03470.
• Please include in your email:
• a 1-3 sentence blurb about yourself;
• website or other preferred contact info (if any);
• a mailing address for your contributor copies.
• Deadline: April 22. We’ll announce a time & place for an anthology-finishing party when it gets closer.

OTHER INFORMATION:

• Each contributor will receive one copy of SPROUTS for each page of their work that appears in it. Contributors may purchase additional copies at wholesale (50% of cover price).
• We prefer new comics, but may consider existing work that is a good fit. If accepted, we ask that you not print your submission elsewhere (except an online excerpt) for at least six months from the anthology’s release date.
• SPROUTS will eventually be compiled with other T&H anthologies into a book collection; please let us know if for some reason you would prefer your piece not to appear in the book. Contributors will receive one copy of the book for each piece they have in it, and may purchase additional copies at wholesale (50% of cover price).
• We are also looking for theme-appropriate designs for the contents page and back cover. The contents page will need to have room for us to type in the title, table of contents, and indicia. The back cover needs room for us to type in the list of contributors. Email organize@treesandhills.org if you are interested.
• Past anthologies

We look forward to seeing your comics!

Visit Trees & Hills at the 6th annual Stars & Skulls Crafty Craft Fair! Organized by Pioneer Valley Roller Derby co-founders Pink Panzer & Bazooka Joe, Stars & Skulls is the Valley’s original DIY alternative craft fair.

The fair will features dozens of tables of locally made jewelry, clothing, knick-knacks, housewares, tasty treats, comics and much more! PVRD will also have a merch/info table.

The fair is Sunday 12/11 from 10 am to 4 pm at the American Legion Hall at 162 Russell St. (AKA Route 9) in Hadley, MA.

As always, admission and parking are free.

Come visit the Trees & Hills table at Ye Olde Lowbrow Art Faire in Thorne’s Marketplace, 150 Main St. Northampton MA, on December 4 & December 18. It’s co-organized by longtime T&H member Anne Thalheimer, so it must be good!

“For two days this holiday season, come down to the basement of Thorne’s Marketplace, for a unique DIY shopping experience featuring 20+ local artists & crafters selling quirky handmade goods, most for under $20. Support your community and buy local handmade gifts this year!

Sunday, December 4th: 10-4
Sunday, December 18th: 10-4

Here is a list of just some of the one-of-a-kind items you will find:

• Monster hats
• Mustaches
• Comix
• Cheap art
• Stuffed creatures
• Onesies
• Jewelry
• Photographs
• Tote bags and purses
• …and so much more!

This is a kid-friendly event. We will have an art area set up to keep the kids entertained while you shop.

There will also be a raffle, which you will be entered in if you bring one canned good or non-perishable food item to donate to the local food bank. The prizes will be an assortment of goodies from our vendors.

We look forward to seeing you there!”