Julia Wertz – författare

Here is New York as you've never seen it before; the New York behind the New York that you think you know so well. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Julia Wertz regales us with dozens of street scenes that show exactly what the city looked like "then" versus "now"; cartoons that detail the quirky, quintessentially New York histories that took place there, and several series of detail drawings including the clocks, mailboxes, lampposts and other ephemera that have evolved over the years. Tenements, Towers & Trash takes on a wild ride in a time-machine taxi, from the streets of the present-day Big Apple lined with big Apple stores and CVS's to the Days of Yore, when Mayor La Guardia declared pinball machines illegal and Greenpoint was the city's premier destination for vaudeville and film. Not just for die-hard New Yorkers, this hilarious, charming book will appeal to any history lover or comics fan, as well as Julia's fans who are eager for more of her work.

**A New York Times Notable Book of the Year**Here is New York, as you've never seen it before! Acclaimed cartoonist Julia Wertz regales us with her triumphant, entertaining, and side-splittingly funny illustrated history of the blocks, the buildings, the guts, and the little known charms (and horrors) of the greatest city in the world. In Tenements, Towers & Trash, Julia Wertz takes us behind, underneath, around, and into the New York that you think you know. Not the tourist's New York (the Statue of Liberty makes a brief appearance and the Empire State Building not at all), but the guts, the underbelly, of this city that never sleeps. With drawings and comics in her signature style, Wertz regales us with streetscapes "Then and Now" and little-known tales, such as the lost history of Kim's Video, the complicated and unresolved business of Ray's Pizza, the vintage trash and horse bones that litter the shore of Brooklyn's Bottle Beach, the ludicrous pinball prohibition, Staten Island's secret abandoned boatyard, and the hair-raising legend of the infamous abortionist of Fifth Avenue, Madame Restell. From bars, bakeries, and bookstores to food carts, street cleaners, and apartments both cramped and grand, Tenements, Towers & Trash is a wild ride in a time machine taxi from the present day city to bygone days of yore.

In her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery.Opening at the culmination of a disastrous trip to Puerto Rico, the first page of Impossible People finds Julia standing stupefied in the middle of the jungle beside a rental Jeep she's just crashed. From this moment, the story flashes back to the beginning of her five-year journey towards sobriety that includes group therapy sessions, relapses, an ill-fated relationship, terrible dates, and an unceremonious eviction from her New York City apartment. Far from the typical addiction narrative that follows an upward trajectory from rock bottom to rehab to recovery, Impossible People portrays the lesser told but more common story: That the road to recover is not always linear. With unflinching honesty, Wertz details the arduous, frustrating, and hilarious story of trying and failing and trying again.

The next installment in Julia Wertz's critically acclaimed graphic memoir series, Bury Me, Already (It's Nice Down Here!) picks up where Impossible People leaves off, with Julia returning home to Northern California, settling down permanently with her on-again-off-again boyfriend Oliver, getting pregnant, and giving birth to their son Felix in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.After being illegally evicted from her basement studio in Brooklyn, Julia returns to Northern California with plans to head to Los Angeles to pursue a different career path. But when she reunites with her family and rekindles a relationship with an ex-boyfriend, she discovers that her vision of the future might not be what she really wants. After a surprise pregnancy and a marriage proposal, Julia settles into quiet life in a small town. But as 2020 approaches, her world-and the world around her- takes sharp turn towards unexpected chaos. Julia's story of pregnancy, miscarriage, the pandemic, wildfires, a family crisis, a traumatic birth, new motherhood, marriage, and a life-altering event is a heart-wrenching, tender, and hilarious story of resilience, adversity, and, ultimately, love.