Chester Brown, in conversation with Reverend Maggie Helwig and Alex Tigchelaar
In support of his new book Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus
Wednesday, April 20th, 7:00pm
@ St. Stephen’s-In-The-Fields Church, 103 Bellevue Ave
Free to attend. Presented by The Beguiling.
UPDATE: This event will be taking place on Wednesday April 20th, not the previously announced date.
The iconoclastic and bestselling cartoonist of Paying for It: A ComicStrip Memoir about being a John returns with a polemical interpretation of the Bible that will be one of the most controversial and talked about graphic novels of 2016. Mary Wept over the Feet of Jesus is the retelling in comics form of nine biblical stories that present Chester Brown’s fascinating and startling thesis about biblical representations of prostitution. Brown weaves a connecting line between Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, Mary of Bethany, and the Virgin Mother and reassesses the Christian moral code by examining the cultural implications of the Bible’s representations of sex work.
Brown will discuss his new work on stage with Reverend Maggie Helwig and writer Alex Tigchelaar in what is sure to be a fascinating conversation at St. Stephen’s-In-The-Fields Church, at College and Bellvue Street. The event takes place Wednesday, April 20th at 7pm, and is free to the public to attend.
Mary Wept over the Feet of Jesus is a fitting follow-up to Brown’s sui generis graphic memoir Paying for It, which was reviewed twice in the New York Times and hailed by sex workers for Brown’s advocacy for the decriminalization and normalization of prostitution. Brown approaches the Bible as he did the life of Louis Riel, making these stories compellingly readable and utterly pertinent to a modern audience. In classic Chester Brown fashion, he provides extensive handwritten endnotes that delve into the biblical lore that informs Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus.
About Chester Brown:
Chester Brown was born in Montreal in 1960 and is best known for his two recent nonfiction graphic novels: the meticulously researched and Harvey Award-winning Louis Riel and the controversial, critically acclaimed Paying for It. Brown began selfpublishing his comic book series Yummy Fur at 23, and has been publishing with D+Q since 1991. He is the author of The Playboy, I Never Liked You, The Little Man, and Ed The Happy Clown. His latest publication is Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus. Brown lives in Toronto, where he ran for Parliament twice as a member of the Libertarian Party of Canada.
