In 2011, Minneapolis native Anders Nilsen shot into the top ranks of the comic book world with "Big Questions," a 658-page epic about existential talking birds. It was named to many critics' best-of lists.
After living much of his adult life elsewhere, the 39-year-old cartoonist recently moved home to teach comics at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
With Nilsen's star ever rising, his publisher, Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly, went back to the presses to re-release the cartoonist's heartbreaking 2006 memoir, "Don't Go Where I Can't Follow." The 96-page mixed-media hardcover paints a touching portrait of his fiancée Cheryl, who died from cancer in 2005.
Nilsen will sign and chat about the book Saturday at Boneshaker Books. Here he talks about the memoir's difficult subject matter, finding inspiration in Minnesota and advice for his new students.
Q Is there anything in particular about the Twin Cities that you've drawn inspiration from?
A It's not the cities themselves, but I've realized more and more as I get older and travel how much my aesthetic comes from the Upper Midwest. The gently rolling -- beautiful, but undramatic -- rolling plains definitely show up in my work a lot.
Q You're known as a cartoonist yet this memoir mixes in old postcards, letters and photos. How do you think that approach bolstered the story you wanted to tell?
A The intended audience originally was just friends and family -- people who knew Cheryl and I -- so it felt appropriate that it be more a document of our time together and her illness than a novelization. I think of it less as art and more as a kind of history. Presenting the actual objects of that history is just a way of minimizing my role as the middleman between reader and story, making it a little more direct. I am known as a cartoonist, and that is a large part of what I do, but really my interest is telling stories with pictures. Cartooning is just one of a multitude of ways that that can happen.
