This Sunday the Brooklyn Book Festival takes over downtown Brooklyn with authors from Dave Eggers to Jonathan Lethem to Myla Goldberg. On the comics side, Adrian Tomine and Miriam Katin will be signing at the Drawn & Quarterly booth and there’s a panel moderated by yours truly:

On Sunday, September 16 at 4:00pm, the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival will present the panel, “The Graphic Truth”, with creators Ivan Velez Jr., (Tales from the Closet), Lauren Weinstein (Girl Stories), and Eric Wight (My Dead Girlfriend), moderated by Heidi MacDonald of Publishers Weekly.

The 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival is a one-day free event, starting at 10am and running until 6pm, taking place at the Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn. It will feature readings and panels on multiple indoor and outdoor stages, a Target Children’s Area, an Independence Community Foundation Young Writers Pavilion, and more than 100 exhibitors, including bookstores, publishers, and literary organizations. For more information, please go to www.brooklynbookfestival.org.

Ivan Velez, Jr. was raised in the South Bronx, winner of the 2004 Xeric grant, is the creator of Tales of the Closet , a ten-chapter graphic novel that depicts the lives of eight gay teenagers in Queens. Ivan has also written for Marvel Comics (Ghost Rider, Abominations, and Venom), and DC Comics (PowerPuff Girls, Eradicator, Extreme Justice, and Flinch).

Lauren Weinstein, recipient of the 2003 Xeric grant, is the creator of the comics collection, Inside Vineyland. In 2004, she received an Ignatz award for “Promising New Talent”, and began work on a graphic novel with etchings called The Goddess of War. Her comics and illustrations have appeared in Glamour, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, LA Weekly, The Chicago Reader, and Seattle’s The Stranger.

Eric Wight, the recipient of the 2004 Russ Manning Award, is the author of the manga, My Dead Girlfriend. He also illustrated the comic book adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Eric is perhaps best known as the “ghost artist” for television character, Seth Cohen on the former Fox TV series The OC and is the creator of Atomic County.