Amie Wright, a history instructor and public history PhD candidate at Carleton University, was recently named the new executive director of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), an annual event promoting “the breadth and diversity of comics.”
Wright has been organizing comics programming in Canada and the U.S. since 2013. She has produced in-person and virtual programming for the American and Ontario Library Associations, TCAF and for Comic Cons in New York and San Diego.
With a background in librarianship and a passion for graphic history, she’s focused on elevating and normalizing comics as a vital genre of historical practice.
The Charlatan spoke with Wright to learn more about her new position and the role of comics in public history.
The Charlatan (TC): What excites you most about your new position?
Amie Wright (AW): One of the things I’m most excited about is the potential for bringing larger attention to comics arts as a very important aspect of Canadian cultural heritage. Importantly for me, TCAF is a unique opportunity for public historians to think about public history in practice, and how arts and culture are such a vibrant part of our cultural landscape.
TC: How will your background as a librarian and public historian inform your new position?
AW: The last significant librarian role I had was managing the school outreach program at the New York Public Library. That gave me a wonderful chance to work with schools and libraries and put into place a lot of comics programming.
In 2017, we had our first dedicated professional development day at the New York Public Library in partnership with New York Comic Con, which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. TCAF had a very vibrant library and educator day prior to COVID. We had done some programming in the intervening years, especially in a hybrid way, but I’m really excited to bring that back in a large way for the festival this year.
TC: How will you promote equity and diversity in your new role?
AW: One of the things that I think is so important and wonderful about comics is that they give people a chance to create books for stories and representations that are missing. Not only are you putting more books on the shelf, but you’re doing so in a way that visual representation is at the forefront.
We talk a lot about how it’s important for people to see themselves reflected in history, yet we don’t necessarily put that into practice in terms of diversifying our curriculum, talking about that in educational spaces or encouraging students to create their own histories on topics they feel are underrepresented.
TC: How does your PhD research in public history inform your new work?
AW: Bringing that lens of public history has been really helpful to think about expanding opportunities for the festival, like building more connections with museums, archives and different university environments.
Whether it’s creative media, new media or journalism, just really talking about history as a much broader discourse than we normally talk about.
TC: How have you worked to destigmatize comics?
AW: Comics are popular for kids, teens and all readers. But, in a lot of the libraries I worked at, there was a lingering stigma around them being considered real reading. One thing I feel is really important is for people in leadership positions or have organizational support to talk about comics as real reading and comics as history.
The most recent panel that I organized for New York Comic Con, we had representatives from the Library of Congress and also Harvard Medical School. They spoke about comics being a vital part of their collections. At Harvard, they have a very large graphic medicine collection, which is the intersection of health care and comics.
I think having such a large collection at an institution like Harvard Medical gives comics a lot of credibility. Even at the Library of Congress, they have comics, newspapers and periodicals all under the same portfolio, which is really good. There is a long tradition of visual narratives at major institutions.
TC: Are there any comics that have had a particular impact on you?
AW: Discovering Joe Sacco’s work as a comics journalist and discovering comics journalism as a field was amazing. Joe is well known for his works Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza.
A lot of comics journalists document forced migration and refugee experiences, so this idea of chronicling something in a way that brings empathy and emotion to representations.
But then also I’ve always been a big superhero fan. I’ve always loved the X-Men.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Featured image provided by Amie Wright.
