The Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series will host author Gene Luen Yang on March 19.
Gene Luen Yang is an award-winning graphic novelist and the 2016 Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He has written and drawn over a dozen books including Duncan’s Kingdom, The Rosary Comic Book, Prime Baby, and Animal Crackers. His 2006 book American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award. His 2013 two-volume graphic novel Boxers & Saints was nominated for the National Book Award and won the LA Times Book Prize. Yang also writes Dark Horse Comics’ Avatar: The Last Airbender series and DC Comics’ Superman. Secret Coders, his middle-grade graphic novel series with cartoonist Mike Holmes, teaches kids the basics of computer programming.Tickets are $11 and available online. The talk begins at 2:30 pm at the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland (map).
With his latest graphic novel, Level Up, Yang returns to the subject he revolutionized with American Born Chinese. Whimsical and serious, by turns, this story about a boy who wants to play video games and his parents’ high expectation for him to go to medical school, is a new look at the tale that Yang has made his own: coming of age as an Asian American.