Picture + Panel: We Are What We Cook

About the Event

This month, Picture + Panel serves up a conversation about food and family with Robert Mgrdich Apelian and Shaina Lu, whose graphic novels explore the intersections of culture, community, and comestibles. Anthony Baum, the Somerville Arts Council's culinary coordinator, will moderate.

All BCAF events are free to attend.  If you wish to pay it forward, a $5 suggested donation helps sustain BCAF's comics advocacy and educational programming in the Greater Boston area.

More about Picture + Panel

Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series that brings fantastic graphic novel creators to the Greater Boston area. Discover terrific authors and fascinating stories that combine text and art through conversational confabulation. Produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books, and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for adults about this unique form of expression.

Book sales are provided at the event by Porter Square Books.

About the Creators

Robert Mgrdich Apelian (he/him) is an Armenian American author-illustrator based in Everett, Massachusetts. He's an avid reader of seinen manga and is especially passionate about making the most of comics as a storytelling medium. A primary goal of his work is to celebrate the diversity and cultural excellence of the Middle East and to portray it as something other than tragic and war-torn.​

Shaina Lu (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese American community artist exploring the intersection of art, education, and activism. She graduated from Wellesley College and Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied arts in education. When she’s not creating community art, she works with young artists and makers in Boston’s Chinatown. Most important, she drinks juice every day, and she is full of sugar.