ISSS Virtual Book Event – An Interview with Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, creators of ARMED WITH MADNESS: THE SURREAL LEONORA CARRINGTON (January 14, 2024).


Sunday, January 14, 2024, 6.30pm to 8pm BST (Please check your own time zone).

The ISSS invites you to an interview with Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, creators of Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington.

Register for the event here.

Reluctant muse and feminist champion… society heiress and rebel refugee…: Leonora Carrington played many roles in her long and extraordinary life.

Renouncing her privileged upbringing in pre-war England for the more exciting elite of Paris’s 1930s avant-garde, she comes to rub shoulders (and more) with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali, after embarking on a complicated love affair with Max Ernst. But the demons that have both haunted and inspired her work are gathering, and when the world goes mad with the outbreak of war and the Nazi invasion, Leonora’s own hold on reality collapses into a terrifying psychotic episode of her own.

Mary M. Talbot

An academic turned graphic novelist, her first graphic novel, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (with Bryan Talbot), won the 2012 Costa Biography Award. Her most recent, Rain (2019, with Bryan Talbot), is a rallying cry to protect the planet.

Bryan Talbot

Multiple award-winning artist Bryan Talbot has been working in comics for over forty years. He’s produced underground, fantasy and superhero stories such as Batman and (with Neil Gaiman) Sandman, and graphic novels including The Adventures of Luther ArkwrightThe Tale of One Bad RatAlice in Sunderland, the Grandville series, as well as illustrating the books written by Mary.

Interviewed by K. A. Laity, author, artist, and Associate Professor of English at the College of Saint Rose (NY) where she teaches medieval literature, crime fiction, film and digital media.