Abrams, formerly Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (HNA), is an American publisher of high-quality art and illustrated books, and the enterprise is presently a subsidiary of the French publisher La Martinière Groupe. Abrams publishes the following imprints:

• Abrams Books
• Stewart, Tabori & Chang
• Abrams Books for Young Readers
• Amulet
• Abrams Image

Run by President and CEO Michael Jacobs, Abrams publishes and distributes approximately 250 titles annually and currently has more than 2,000 titles in print. Abrams also distributes publications for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, Royal Academy, Vendome Press, Booth Clibborn Editions, Other Criteria, and 5 Continents.^[1]

History[link]

Founded by Harry N. Abrams in 1949, Abrams was the first company in the United States to specialize in the creation and distribution of art books.^[2][3] Times Mirror acquired the company in 1966, and Harry Abrams retired in 1977. For many years, the company was under the direction of Paul Gottlieb (publisher), until January 2001, eighteen months before his death.^[4] Abrams had been acquired by La Martinière Groupe in 1997.^[3]

Imprints[link]

Abrams Books[link]

Abrams Books publishes illustrated books on the subjects of art, architecture, photography, graphic design, interior and garden design, fashion, music, comic arts and graphic novels, and sports. The Abrams imprint is currently under the direction of Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Eric Himmel and Senior Vice President and Publisher Steven Tager. Books published by this imprint includes Himalayas,The Art of Walt Disney,^[5][6] Norman Rockwell's Christmas, Gnomes,^{[7][8][9][10]} Faeries,^[11][12] Man’s Best Friend,^{[13][14][15][16]} Avedon: Performance,^{[17][18][19][20]} Vanity Fair: The Portraits,^{[21][22][23][24]} Rolling Stone: 1,000 Covers, Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, The Diary of Frida Kahlo,^[25] Earth from Above,^{[26][27][28][29][30][31]} Twilight, Tiffany Style, Textile Designs, Slim Aarons: Once Upon a Time, Tim Flach: Equus, Dogs Gods, Graffiti World, Mom's Cancer, Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, and R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues; Jazz & Country, as well the bestselling "365" and "Discoveries" series. In Spring 2009, Abrams launched a sub-imprint devoted to comics and graphic novels, Abrams ComicArts. In addition to its own titles, Abrams distributes books for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, Royal Academy, Vendome Press, Booth Clibborn Editions, Other Criteria, and 5 Continents.

Stewart, Tabori & Chang (STC)[link]

Stewart, Tabori & Chang (STC) was founded in 1981 by Andrew Stewart, Lena Tabori, and Nai Chang, three former Harry N. Abrams executives. STC was purchased by Éditions de La Martinière in 2000 and is now an imprint of ABRAMS under the direction of Senior Vice President and Publisher Leslie Stoker.^[32] STC is a publisher of illustrated inspirational and practical titles. The house specializes in the categories of cooking, crafts, interior design, sports, green living, sports, pets, and popular culture. Some of STC's bestselling titles are Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food, Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, Bunny Williams's Affair with a House, and Grandmother Remembers, which has sold 2 million copies. Over a dozen of STC's cookbooks have won James Beard^[33] and International Association of Culinary Professionals^[34] awards over the years, and three STC cookbooks have been named Best Book of the Year by those organizations.

Abrams Books for Young Readers[link]

Abrams Books for Young Readers was launched in 1999, under the direction of Senior Vice President and Publisher Howard W. Reeves. The books range from story books to poetry to the fine arts and other nonfiction. Some highlights of this award-winning children’s line for preschool to middlegrade readers include the bestselling Enigma by Graeme Base; Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by 20th–Century American Art, 2002 winner of the coveted Michael J. Printz Honor Award;^[35] Maritcha by Tonya Bolden, 2006 winner of the Coretta Scott King Honor Award;^[36] The Jellybeans and the Big Dance by bestselling author Laura Numeroff; and Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar's Museum of Art.

Amulet Books[link]

Amulet Books is a list of novels and nonfiction for young adults and middle grade readers, launched in 2004, under the direction of Senior Vice President and Publisher Howard Reeves and Associate Publisher Susan Van Metre. Since its inception, Amulet has published many bestselling and award-winning books, including Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series,^{[37][38][39][40][41][42][43]} Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series,^[44][45] Michael Buckley’s Sisters Grimm series,^[46][47][48] and Aidan Chambers’s This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn.^[49][50]

Abrams Image[link]

Abrams Image was launched in Spring 2006 to publish stylish illustrated and nonillustrated books with a little more edge in the categories of music, humor, reference, photography, design, and popular culture. Highlights of the list include the national bestsellers Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar and Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style. Other notable titles include Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, Pot Culture, The Facebook Book, Make the Bible Work for You, Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats, and No Wave: Post Punk. Underground. New York. 1976—1980, Office Mayhem: A Handbook to Practical Anarchy.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

Kyle John Baker^[1] (born 1965)^[2] is an American cartoonist, comic book writer-artist, and animator known for his graphic novels and for a 2000s revival of the series Plastic Man.

Baker has won numerous Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards for his work in the comics field.

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Kyle Baker was born in the Queens, New York City,^[3] the son of art director John M. Baker and high-school audiovisual-department manager Eleanor L. Baker.^[1] He has a brother and a sister.^[3] Their parents had both attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and their father, who "worked in advertising [and] made junk mail", would "draw pictures for us and entertain us."^[3] Aside from this exposure to art, Baker has said, his early artistic influences included comic book artist Jack Kirby, caricaturist Jack Davis, and painter and magazine illustrator Norman Rockwell. He noted:

When I was a little boy I loved the funny papers. ... I used to read Pogo, Li'l Abner, Peanuts, Blondie and B.C. among others. I loved to draw Johnny Hart's B.C. characters and the Muppets. I made up my own cartoon characters and drew stories about them. I loved Mad magazine. I had paperback reprints of the early [Harvey] Kurtzman stories, illustrated by Wally Wood, Will Elder, and Jack Davis. I loved Disney movies. ... I would come home from the movies and practice drawing the characters. I drew little animated flip books on index cards. When I was 11, I had a Super-8 movie camera and I made animated cartoons. I remember making a 'King Kong' out of clay, and a drawing of a New York skyline, and I made a stop-motion film of King-Kong fighting model airplanes. In junior high school, I drew comic books and Xeroxed them at my dad's office. I sold the Xeroxes for five cents each. I think I made fifteen cents.^[4]

Other influences included the Charlton Comics artwork of Jim Aparo and Steve Ditko.^[3]

Breaking into comics[link]

In his senior year of high school, Baker became an intern at Marvel Comics, making photocopies and filing fan mail.^[4] "I sort of fell into Marvel because I happened to know somebody there," he said. "But I always thought I was going to do funny stuff" rather than superhero comics.^[3] He became background assistant to Marvel inker Josef Rubinstein, and later also assisted Vince Colletta and Andy Mushynski.^[4] He cited Marvel artists Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom and Larry Hama and writer and editor-in-chief Jim Shooter as providing him art and storytelling advice.^[5] Part of his duties involved photocopying, and he would take copies of John Buscema penciling home on which to practice inking.^[5] While working for Marvel, Baker attended the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan, studying graphic design and printmaking,^[6] but dropped out after two years.^[4] Through that connection, however, he began freelancing with famed graphic designer Milton Glaser, an SVA instructor, assisting him on a set of children's books.^[6]

Baker's first credited work at Marvel is penciling the half-page entry "Kid Commandos" in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #13 (Feb.1984).^[7] After a handful of inking assignments on issues of Transformers, The Avengers Annual #14 (1985) and elsewhere, Baker made his professional story-illustration debut as penciler and inker of the publisher Lodestone Comics' Codename: Danger #2 (Oct. 1985), with a 23-page story written by Brian Marshall, Mike Harris, and Robert Loren Fleming. Cover penciling and more interior inking for Marvel and occasionally DC followed. His first story penciling for one of the two major comics companies was the three-issue Howard The Duck: The Movie (Dec. 1986 - Feb. 1987), adapting the 1986 film Howard the Duck, and which he self-inked.^[7]

During this time, Baker also attempted to sell humor spot illustrations, but was rejected by the major newspaper syndicates. Jim Salicrup, a Marvel editor, did commission him "to write a few one-panel gags about [the superhero team] the X-Men",^[4] titled "It's Genetic" and appearing in the Marvel-produced fan magazine Marvel Age.^[8]

First graphic novel[link]

At the recommendation of freelance artist Ron Fontes, an editor at the Dolphin imprint of the publishing house Doubleday expressed interest in Baker's sample strips of the character Cowboy Wally, "and asked if I had any more. I lied and said I did."^[4] This led to the 128-page graphic novel Cowboy Wally.^[7] "The character of Noel was pretty much based on me," Baker said in 1999. "I lie all the time.^[9] The first part of the books is the collected strips, and the other three chapters were written for the book.^[4] "It didn't sell many copies," Baker said, "but at least it convinced DC [Comics] I should be allowed to draw, not just ink."^[4]

Baker went on to draw DC's 1980s comics revival of the pulp fiction hero The Shadow, beginning with The Shadow Annual #2 (1988), followed by the monthly series from issue #7 to the final issue, #19 (Feb. 1988 - Jan. 1989). He did assorted other DC work including Justice, Inc.. In 1990, Baker and writer Len Wein produced three issues of Dick Tracy for The Walt Disney Company's Hollywood Comics, the first two issues containing original stories, the third adaption the 1990 Dick Tracy film.^[10]

He began scripting comics around this time: Baker penciled and inked First Comics' Classics Illustrated #3 & 21 (Feb. 1990 & March 1991), adapting, respectively, Through the Looking Glass and Cyrano de Bergerac While Peter David scripted the latter, Baker himself wrote the adaptation of the Lewis Carroll work.^[7] "I'd never planned to become a writer," Baker said in 1999. "I wrote short gags, like the kind you see in the newspapers and Cowboy Wally, but not stories. I only learned to write stories because people kept paying me to write them. In the years 1991-1994, 90 percent of my income was from writing, and I received very few offers to draw. I figured I should learn to write."^[4]

[edit] Why I Hate Saturn, commercial illustration

Baker achieved recognition and won an Eisner Award for his 1990 graphic novel Why I Hate Saturn, published by the DC Comics imprint Piranha Press. Baker said in 1999 of his breakthrough work,

I wrote Why I Hate Saturn at a time when comic books had stopped being fun for me. I was tired of being told how to draw and what to draw. And I was sick of begging people to let me work the way I wanted. Editors told me my stuff was 'underground' and 'alternative'. I decided that if I were going to work in a creatively oppressive atmosphere and not even be allowed to own my work, I might as well go to Hollywood and be oppressed for big money. Back in the eighties, DC and Marvel wouldn't let you own your characters, and Fantagraphics had no money. So when I finally got permission to do Why I Hate Saturn, a book I'd been trying years to sell, I decided to write it like a sitcom and send it to Hollywood. ... [However,] I don't have anything to do with the [then-proposed] Why I Hate Saturn movie. DC controls those rights. I don't own those characters, so it is of no interest to me.^[4]

Baker's cartoons and caricatures began appearing in BusinessWeek, Details, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN, Esquire, Guitar World, Mad, National Lampoon, New York, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin magazine, Us, Vibe, and The Village Voice.^{[citation needed]} He spent three years illustrating the weekly strip "Bad Publicity" for New York magazine.^[2]

Animation[link]

Baker's animation has appeared on BET and MTV, and in animated Looney Tunes projects, including the animated feature Looney Tunes: Back in Action.^{[citation needed]} Baker was "guest art director" for Cartoon Network's Class of 3000, and storyboarded the Class of 3000 Christmas special.^{[citation needed]}

in 1994, Baker directed an animated video featuring the hip hop singer KRS-ONE, called "Break The Chain".^{[citation needed]} Marvel Comics had published Break the Chain as a comic book packaged with a read-along hip-hop audiocassette.^[9] That same year and next, he contributed to the four-issue Dark Horse Comics humor anthology Instant Piano (Dec. 1994 - June 1995), including drawing the cover of the premiere.^[7] For another anthology, DC's Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (Aug. 1999), Baker drew, colored, lettered and with his wife, teacher Elizabeth Glass, whom he married July 18, 1998,^[1] wrote the 10-page parallel universe story "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter". It would win a "Best Short Story" Eisner Award despite DC destroying all copies intended for the North American market after deeming some of the content unsuitable, through copies were still distributed in Europe.^[11]

Baker said in 1999 he was writing a Christmas movie for Paramount Pictures, titled U Betta Watch Out, and was animating a TV-movie title Corey Q. Jeeters, I'm Telling on You.^[4]

At this point in his career, Baker stated in an interview, "Nobody tells me what to write or how to draw. Only an idiot would dare tell Kyle Baker how to make a good cartoon. Hollywood and the magazine world are full of idiots. They water my stuff down and make it unfunny."^[9]

2000s[link]

Baker drew writer Robert Morales' Marvel Comics miniseries Truth #1-4 (Jan.-April 2003), a Captain America storyline with parallels to the Tuskegee experiment. He also wrote and drew all but one issue (#7) of the 20-issue comedic adventure series Plastic Man vol. 4 (Feb. 2004 - March 2006), starring the Golden Age of Comic Books superhero created by Jack Cole for Quality Comics. Baker contributed to the Dark Horse Comics series The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a spin-off of Michael Chabon's novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.^[7]

In 2006, his company, Kyle Baker Publishing, serialized a four-part comic book series about Nat Turner, and published the series The Bakers, based on his family life, in two anthologies, Cartoonist and Cartoonist Vol. 2: Now with More Bakers. He has also continued to provide comics material sporadically to Marvel, DC and Image Comics through at least 2010.^[7] In 2007 and 2008, Image Comics published Baker's six-issue Image Comics miniseries Special Forces, a teen-soldier military satire that criticizes the exhortation of felons and disabled Americans into military service.^[7][12] The New York Times reviewed the 2009 trade-paperback collection of the first four issues, calling it "the harshest, most serrated satire of the Iraq War yet published."^[13]

In 2008, Watson-Guptill published How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning, Baker's art instruction book. That same year, Baker hosted the comics industry's Harvey Awards.^[14] In 2010, he became regular artist on Marvel Comic' mature-audience MAX-imprint series, Deadpool Max.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[link]

Comics works include:

• The Cowboy Wally Show (Doubleday, 1988; reissued Marlowe & Company, 1996; DC/Vertigo, 2003;writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-56924-834-6
• Through the Looking-Glass (Classics International Entertainment; year n.a.; reprinted Berkley Publishing, 1990; illustrator)) ISBN 1-57209-002-2 (orig.); ISBN 0-425-12022-8 (rep.)
• Why I Hate Saturn (DC Comics/Piranha Press, 1990; reprinted DC Comics/Vertigo, December 1998; writer, illustrator) ISBN 0-930289-72-2
• The Residents: Freak Show (Dark Horse Comics, collected 1992; illustrator) ISBN 1-56971-001-5
• You Are Here (DC Comics, November 1998; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-56389-442-4
• I Die at Midnight (DC Comics/Vertigo, 2000; writer, illustrator) ISBNB0006RONA0
• King David (DC Comics/Vertigo, 2002; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-56389-866-7
• Undercover Genie: The Irreverent Conjurings of an Illustrative Aladdin (DC Comics, collected ephemera 2003; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-4012-0104-0
• Truth: Red, White & Black (Marvel Comics, collected February 2004; co-creator with Robert Morales, illustrator) ISBN 0-7851-1072-0
• Cartoonist (Kyle Baker Publishing, May 2004; writer, illustrator, publisher) ISBN 0-9747214-0-9
• Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel (Crown; July 2004; illustrator) ISBN 1-4000-4859-1
• Plastic Man: On the Lam (DC Comics, collected 2005; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-4012-0343-4
• Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits (DC Comics, collected 2006; writer, illustrator) ISBN 1-4012-0729-4
• Cartoonist, Volume 2: Now With More Bakers (Kyle Baker Publishing; writer, illustrator, publisher) ISBN 0-9747214-1-7
• The Bakers: Do These Toys Belong Somewhere? (Kyle Baker Publishing, collected 2006; writer, illustrator, publisher) ISBN 0-9747214-3-3
• The Bakers: Babies and Kittens (Image Comics) ISBN 978-1-58240-813-2
• Nat Turner (Abrams) ISBN 978-0-8109-9535-2
• Wednesday Comics #1-12 - Hawkman as writer and artist. (2009)
• Prelude to Deadpool Corps #5 (with Victor Gischler, 5-issue limited series, Marvel Comics, May 2010, 120 pages, premiere hardcover, July 2010, ISBN 0-7851-4752-7)

Awards[link]

• Eisner Award, Best Writer/Artist: Humor:
  • 1999 - Kyle Baker, You Are Here (DC Comics/Vertigo)
  • 2000 - Kyle Baker, I Die at Midnight (DC/Vertigo); "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter" in Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (DC)
  • 2004 - Kyle Baker, Plastic Man (DC); The New Baker (Kyle Baker Publishing)
  • 2005 - Kyle Baker, Plastic Man (DC); Kyle Baker, Cartoonist (Kyle Baker Publishing)
  • 2006 - Kyle Baker, Plastic Man (DC); The Bakers (Kyle Baker Publishing)
• Eisner Award, Best Short Story:
  • 2000 - "Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter" by Kyle Baker in Elseworlds 80-Page Giant (DC)
• Eisner Award, Best New Series:
  • 2004 - Plastic Man, by Kyle Baker (DC)
• Eisner Award, Best Title for Younger Readers/Best Comics Publication for a Younger Audience:
  • 2005 - Plastic Man, by Kyle Baker and Scott Morse (DC)
• Harvey Award, Best Graphic Album of Original Work:
  • 1991 - Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker (Piranha Press)
  • 1999 - You Are Here by Kyle Baker (Paradox Press)
• Harvey Award, Best New Series:
  • 2005 - Plastic Man, by Kyle Baker (DC)
• Harvey Award, Special Award for Humor:
  • 2005 - Plastic Man, by Kyle Baker (DC)
  • 2006 - Plastic Man, by Kyle Baker (DC)
• 2006 Glyph Comics Awards
  • Story of the Year - Nat Turner, Kyle Baker, writer and artist
  • Best Artist: Kyle Baker, Nat Turner
  • Best Cover: Nat Turner #1, Kyle Baker, illustrator
• 2007 Glyph Comics Awards
  • Best Artist: Kyle Baker, The Bakers
• 2008 Glyph Comics Awards
  • Best Artist: Kyle Baker, Nat Turner: Revolution

References[link]

External links[link]

• QualityJollity.com (official site). Archived from the original July 15, 2011.
• Luxury Cartooning (official blog). Archived from the original July 22, 2011.
• Archive of KyleBaker.com (former official site)
• Mathews, Ed (2005, n.d.). "Interview: Kyle Baker". PopImage.com. Archived from the original on May 14, 2009. http://www.popimage.com/content/kylebaker2005.html. 
• Kyle Baker at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
• Kyle Baker at the Comic Book DB

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

Nathaniel "Nat" Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths,^[2] the largest number of fatalities to occur in one uprising prior to the American Civil War in the southern United States. He gathered supporters in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged. In the aftermath, the state executed 56 blacks accused of being part of Turner's slave rebellion. Two hundred blacks were also beaten and killed by white militias and mobs reacting with violence.^[3] Across Virginia and other southern states, state legislators passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services.

Early life[link]

At birth, Turner's owner recorded only his given name, Nat, although he may have had a last name within the slave community. In accordance with common practice, the whites referred to him by the last name of his owner, Benjamin Turner. This practice was continued by historians. Turner knew little about the background of his father, who was believed to have escaped from slavery when Turner was a young boy. Turner remained close to his paternal grandmother, Old Bridget, who was also enslaved by Benjamin Turner. Turner's maternal grandmother was one of the Coromantee from present day Ghana, a group known for slave revolts. She was captured in Africa at thirteen years of age and shipped to America.^[4]

Turner spent his life in Southampton County, Virginia, a predominantly black area.^[5] After the rebellion, a reward notice described Turner as:

5 feet 6 or 8 inches high, weighs between 150 and 160 pounds, rather bright complexion, but not a mulatto, broad shoulders, larger flat nose, large eyes, broad flat feet, rather knockneed, walks brisk and active, hair on the top of the head very thin, no beard, except on the upper lip and the top of the chin, a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, near the wrist, produced by a blow.^[6]

Turner had "natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension, surpassed by few."^[7] He learned to read and write at a young age. Deeply religious, Nat was often seen fasting, praying, or immersed in reading the stories of the Bible.^[8] He frequently experienced visions which he interpreted as messages from God. These visions greatly influenced his life; for instance, when Turner was 22 years old, he ran away from his owner, but returned a month later after having such a vision. Turner often conducted Baptist services, preaching the Bible to his fellow slaves, who dubbed him "The Prophet". Turner also had influence over white people, and in the case of Ethelred T. Brantley, Turner said that he was able to convince Brantley to "cease from his wickedness".^[9]

By early 1828, Turner was convinced that he "was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty."^[10][11] While working in his owner's fields on May 12, Turner "heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first."^[12] Turner was convinced that God had given him the task of "slay[ing] my enemies with their own weapons."^[12] Turner "communicated the great work laid out for me to do, to four in whom I had the greatest confidence" – his fellow slaves Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam.^[12]

Beginning in February 1831, Turner came to believe that certain atmospheric conditions were to be interpreted as a sign that he should begin preparing for a rebellion against the slave owners.

On February 11, 1831, an annular solar eclipse was seen in Virginia. Turner saw this as a black man's hand reaching over the sun, and he took this vision as his sign. The rebellion was initially planned for July 4, Independence Day, but was postponed for more deliberation between him and his followers, and due to illness. On August 13, there was another solar eclipse, in which the sun appeared bluish-green (possibly from debris deposited in the atmosphere by an eruption of Mount Saint Helens). Turner took this occasion as the final signal, and about a week later, on August 21, he began the rebellion.

Rebellion[link]

Turner started with a few trusted fellow slaves. The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing slaves and killing the white people they found. The rebels ultimately included more than 70 enslaved and free blacks.^[13]

Because the rebels did not want to alert anyone to their presence as they carried out their attacks, they initially used knives, hatchets, axes, and blunt instruments instead of firearms.^[14] The rebellion did not discriminate by age or sex, until it was determined that the rebellion had achieved sufficient numbers. Nat Turner only confessed to killing one of the rebellion's victims, Margret Whitehead, whom he killed with a blow from a fence post.^[14]

Before a white militia was able to respond, the rebels killed 60 men, women, and children.^[15] They spared a few homes "because Turner believed the poor white inhabitants 'thought no better of themselves than they did of negros.'"^[16][17] Turner also thought that revolutionary violence would serve to awaken the attitudes of whites to the reality of the inherent brutality in slave-holding, a concept similar to 20th century philosopher Franz Fanon's idea of "violence as purgatory".^[18] Turner later said that he wanted to spread "terror and alarm" among whites.^[19]

Capture and execution[link]

The capture of Nat Turner

The rebellion was suppressed within two days, but Turner eluded capture until October 30, when he was discovered hiding in a hole covered with fence rails. On November 5, 1831, he was tried for "conspiring to rebel and making insurrection", convicted and sentenced to death.^[20] Turner was hanged on November 11 in Jerusalem, Virginia, now known as Courtland, Virginia. His body was flayed, beheaded and quartered.^[21] In the aftermath of the insurrection there were 45 slaves, including Turner, and 5 free blacks tried for insurrection and related crimes in Southampton. Of the 45 slaves tried, 15 were acquitted. Of the 30 convicted, 18 were hanged, while 12 received mercy and were sold out of state. Of the 5 free blacks tried for participation in the insurrection, one was hanged, while the others were acquitted.^[22]

After Turner's execution, a local lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray, took it upon himself to publish "The Confessions of Nat Turner", derived partly from research done while Turner was in hiding and partly from jailhouse conversations with Turner before trial. This work is the primary historical document regarding Nat Turner.

Consequences[link]

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2007)

In total, the state executed 56 blacks suspected of having been involved in the uprising. In the aftermath, close to 200 blacks, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured, and killed.^[23]

Before the Nat Turner Revolt, there was a small but ineffectual antislavery movement in Virginia,^{[citation needed]} largely on account of economic trends that made slavery less profitable in the Old South in the 1820s and fears among whites of the rising number of blacks, especially in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions. Most of the movement's members, including acting governor John Floyd, supported resettlement of blacks to Africa for these reasons. Considerations of white racial and moral purity also influenced many of these antislavery Virginians.^{[citation needed]}

Nevertheless, fears of repetitions of the Nat Turner Revolt polarized moderates and slave owners across the South.^{[citation needed]} Municipalities across the region instituted repressive policies against blacks. Rights were taken away from those who were free. The freedoms of all black people in Virginia were tightly curtailed. Socially, the uprising discouraged whites' questioning the slave system from the perspective that such discussion might encourage similar slave revolts. Manumissions had decreased by 1810. The shift away from tobacco had made owning slaves in the Upper South an excess to the planters' needs, so they started to hire out slaves. With the ending of the slave trade, the invention of the cotton gin, and opening up of new territories in the Deep South, suddenly there was a growing market for the trading of slaves. Over the next decades, more than a million slaves would be transported to the Deep South in a forced migration as a result of the domestic slave trade.

In terms of public response and loss of white lives, slaveholders in the Upper South and coastal states were deeply shocked by the Nat Turner Rebellion. While the 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana involved a greater number of slaves, it resulted in only two white fatalities. Events in Louisiana did not receive as much attention in those years in the Upper South and Lowcountry. Because of his singular status, Turner is regarded as a hero by some African Americans and pan-Africanists worldwide.

Turner became the focus of historical scholarship in the 1940s, when historian Herbert Aptheker was publishing the first serious scholarly work on instances of slave resistance in the antebellum South. Aptheker wrote that the rebellion was rooted in the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system. He traversed libraries and archives throughout the South, managing to uncover roughly 250 similar instances, though none of them reached the scale of Nat Turner's Revolt.

Legacy[link]

Interpretations[link]

Looking back, Nat Turner remains an "enigmatic and controversial figure", according to former University of Massachusetts Amherst history professor Stephen B. Oates, given that Turner fought for the just anti-slavery cause but he proceeded in acts of violence against women and children that would today be considered as war crimes or terrorism. Among many, perhaps most, African-Americans in the antebellum period up to today, Turner's legacy takes on a heroic status as someone willing to make slave-owners pay for the hardships that they enacted upon the millions of children, women and men they enslaved.^[16] Black church historical writer James H. Harris has argued that the revolt "marked the turning point in the black struggle for liberation" since, in his view, "only a cataclysmic act could convince the architects of a violent social order that violence begets violence."^[18]

Shortly after the revolt, Turner's motives and ideas were generally seen as opaque and too unclear to either support or condemn by most American whites.^[19] Ante-bellum slave-holding whites clearly experienced a major psychological shock and lived in greater fear of future rebellions, with Turner's name working as "a symbol of terrorism and violent retribution".^[16] Turner eventually received praise in a seminal Atlantic Monthly article in 1861 by Thomas Higginson, who called him a man "who knew no book but the Bible, and that by heart-- who devoted himself soul and body to the cause of his race". However, writing after the September 11 attacks, William L. Andrews drew analogies between Turner and modern “religio-political terrorists”, and suggested that the “spiritual logic” explicated in Confessions of Nat Turner warrants study as “a harbinger of the spiritualizing violence of today’s jihads and crusades”.^[19] Most historical commentary tended to sympathize with Turner after the U.S. civil war ended.

In popular culture[link]

• The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), a novel by William Styron, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968.^[24] This book had wide critical and popular acclaim, but several critics considered it racist and "a deliberate attempt to steal the meaning of a man's life."^[25] These assertions were part of cultural discussions about how different peoples can interpret the past and whether any one group has sole ownership of any portion.
• In response to Styron's novel, ten African-American writers published The Second Crucifixion of Nat Turner in 1968.^[26]
• Nat Turner's Rebellion plays a major role in Episode 5 of the 1977 TV miniseries Roots. This is historically inaccurate, however, because the opening credits state that this part of the story takes place in the year 1841. Nat Turner's Rebellion ended 10 years earlier with Nat's execution in 1831.^[27]
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Nat Turner as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.^[28]
• Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, a film by Charles Burnett, was released in 2003.^[29]
• In 2007 cartoonist and comic book author Kyle Baker wrote a two-part comic book about Turner and his uprising, which was called Nat Turner.^[30]
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "The City" by the Wu-Tang Clan off their album Wu-Tang Forever.
• Philadelphia MC Reef the Lost Cauze put out a song called "Nat Turner" on his album A Vicious Cycle.^[31]
• In 2009, in Newark, New Jersey the largest city-owned park to be completed was named Nat Turner Park. The park is named in honor of Nat Turner and his struggle for freedom. The facility cost $12 million in construction.^[32]
• In early 2009, comic book artist and animator Brad Neely created a Web animation entitled "American Moments of Maybe", a satirical video game advertisement for Nat Turner's Punchout! a game in which a player supposedly took on the role of Nat Turner.^[33]
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "The Point of No Return" by Immortal Technique on the album Revolutionary Vol. 2.
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "Born Fe Rebel" by Steel Pulse.
• The Letter Writer by Ann Rinaldi is a work of historical fiction that tells of Nat Turner's uprising.
• The rebellion is mentioned in the Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, a slave narrative by an escaped slave.
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "Ah Yeah" by KRS-One.
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "Somebody's Gotta Do It'" by The Roots on their 2004 album The Tipping Point
• On Kanye West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Gil Scott-Heron's track "Comment #1", in which Nat Turner is mentioned, is part of Track 13: "Who Will Survive in America".
• Nat Turner is mentioned in the song "David Rose" by Clutch (band) (hidden track on some copies of The Elephant Riders)
• Nat Turner is mentioned in Public Enemy's "Prophets of Rage," on their album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
• American metal band Cormorant wrote a song about the rebellion titled "Blood on the Cornfields" on their Metazoa album.
• Nat Turner is also brought up in the book, Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl.

See also[link]

• John Brown (abolitionist)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Nat Turner biography, part of the Africans in America series Website from PBS.
• "Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property"
• Digital Library on American Slavery

Further reading[link]

• Herbert Aptheker. American Negro Slave Revolts. 5th edition. New York: International Publishers, 1983 (1943).
• Herbert Aptheker. Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion. New York: Humanities Press, 1966.
• Scot French. The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2004.
• William Lloyd Garrison, "The Insurrection", The Liberator, (September 3, 1831). A contemporary abolitionist's reaction to news of the rebellion.
• Walter L. Gordon III. The Nat Turner Insurrection Trials: A Mystic Chord Resonates Today (Booksurge, 2009).
• Thomas R. Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrections in Southampton, Va. Baltimore: Lucas & Deaver, 1831. Available online.
• William Stryon, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Random House Inc, 1993, ISBN 0-679-73663-8
• Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990 (1975).
• Brodhead, Richard H. "Millennium, Prophecy and the Energies of Social Transformation: The Case of Nat Turner," in A. Amanat and M. Bernhardsson (eds.), Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London, I. B. Tauris, 2002), 212-233.
• Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed. Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Junius P. Rodriguez, ed. Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006.
• Ely, Mike. "The Slave Rebellion of General Nat Turner". Kasama Project. December 2007

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nat Turner

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Nat Turner

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nat Turner

• Works by Nat Turner at Project Gutenberg
• The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. Baltimore: T. R. Gray, 1831.
• Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, California Newsreel
• Nat Turner's Rebellion, Africans in America, PBS.org
• Jessica McElrath, Nat Turner's Rebellion, About.com
• Thomas Ruffin Gray, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) online edition
• "Nat Turner: Lightning Rod" on the American Heritage website
• Interview with Sharon Ewell Foster regarding her recent research on Turner, The State of Things, North Carolina Public Radio, 31 Aug 2011
• Nat Turner Unchained an independent feature film about the Nat Turner revolt.

Lauren Myracle at LA Times Festival of Books 2012

Lauren Myracle (born May 15, 1969 in Brevard, North Carolina) is an american author of young adult books. She is the oldest of three sisters and has three older brothers. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia where she attended Trinity School and The Westminster Schools.^[1][2] Myracle earned a BA in English and Psychology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. After that, she worked for some time as a middle-school teacher in Gwinnett County, Georgia and participated in the JET Programme in Japan.^[3] Myracle later earned an MA in English from Colorado State University, where she taught for two years and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College.^[1] She has written many novels, including the best-selling "IM" books, ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r. Her book Thirteen Plus One was released May 4, 2010. Myracle's younger sister, Susan Rebecca White, writes adult fiction, including Bound South (2009) and A Soft Place to Land (2010).

Novels[link]

Her first novel, Kissing Kate, was released in 2004. Her middle-grade novel, Eleven, came out 2004, along with Twelve, which came out in 2007. Myracle published The Fashion Disaster that Changed My Life in 2005. Thirteen was released in March 2008. She recently also came out with the book Thirteen Plus One in 2010. She also wrote Rhymes with Witches and Bliss, which came out in 2008, is its prequel. She also has a book entitled How to Be Bad with E. Lockhart.

The "IM" books (ttyl (talk to you later), ttfn (ta ta for now), l8r, g8r (later, gator)) are about 3 friends—Zoe, Maddie, and Angela—who experience typical high school drama: boys, drugs, alcohol, parties, driving, and college prep. The novels ttyl and ttfn were both New York Times bestsellers, and ttyl was the first-ever novel to be written entirely in instant messages.^[3] Most of Myracle's novels take place in Atlanta, Georgia and are inspired by her childhood friends and experiences, and her large diverse family.

Her latest work (as of November, 2011) Shine is set in rural western North Carolina and deals with a young girl's search for the perpetrators of a hate crime against her gay friend.

Censorship[link]

According to the American Library Association, Myracle's books were the most challenged books of 2009 and 2011.^[4] Her books continue to be challenged in school libraries, usually for scenes of alleged sexuality, homosexuality, or alcohol use. Scholastic Books nearly refused to carry Luv Ya Bunches at its national school book fair events due to the fact that the book features lesbian mothers.^[5] Scholastic recanted its initial decision after a large internet outcry.^[6]

Myracle is highly critical of adults attempting to keep books away from teenagers, believing that kids are smart enough to understand the message in books and learn their lessons. Regarding her own children's reading, she says "As a mom, I want my kids to read any fucking book they want! I want them to read."^[7]

Awards and honors[link]

Her first novel, Kissing Kate, was selected an Allie McNamara ALA Best Books for Young Adults for the year 2004. It was named by Booklist as one of the "Top Ten Youth Romances" of the year, as well as one of the "Top Ten Books by New Writers".

Rhymes with Witches, is included in Anita Silvey's "500 Great Books for Teens",^[8] and was nominated for "Best Books for Young Adults" by the American Library Association.^[3]

National Book Foundation controversy[link]

In October, 2011, a media firestorm erupted when the National Book Foundation announced that Shine was one of five finalist for that year's National Book Award in youth literature, only to modify that announcement within a few hours to state that Shine was one of six nominees for the award and place another YA novel Chime, on the list. According to the Huffington Post and Vanity Fair the Foundation then demanded that Myracle withdraw Shine from consideration, because the Foundation had mistakenly named her book as a finalist when it had meant to name Chime. Myracle's handling of the matter was heralded by the media and internet bloggers as "graceful" and "mature," while the National Book Foundation was pilloried for its inept attempt to correct its own error. Myracle says that "...at the time, I felt like my heart was being ripped out."^[7]

Published works[link]

Series[link]

Winnie Years Series[link]

1. Ten (2011)
2. Eleven (2004)
3. Twelve (2007)
4. Thirteen (2008)
5. Thirteen Plus One(2009)

[edit] Internet Girls series

1. ttyl (2005)
2. ttfn (2007)
3. l8r, g8r (2008)
4. bff (2009) (A special fill-in-the-blank book.)

Other works[link]

• Kissing Kate (2003)
• The Fashion Disaster that Changed My Life (2005)
• Rhymes With Witches (2005)
• Four Summer Stories: Fireworks (short story anthology)- "Such a Pretty Face" (2007)
• Prom Nights from Hell, co-written with Meg Cabot, Kim Harrison, Michele Jaffe, and Stephenie Meyer (2007)
• How to Be Bad, co-written with Sarah Mlynowski and E. Lockhart (2008)
• Bliss (2008)
• Let It Snow, co-written with Maureen Johnson and John Green (2008)
• Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks (2009)
• Luv Ya Bunches (2009)
• Violet In Bloom (2010)
• Shine (2011)
• Oopsy Daisy (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• An Interview with Lauren Myracle on Veronika Asks

Stefan Sagmeister
File:StefanSagmeister.jpg Sagmeister in 2008
Born	1962 (age 49–50) Bregenz, Austria
Nationality	Austrian
Field	Graphic Design, Film
Training	University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna Pratt Institute, New York City
Works	Set the Twilight Reeling poster (1996) AIGA Detroit poster (1999) Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far (2008)
Website	sagmeister.com

Stefan Sagmeister (born 1962 in Bregenz, Austria) is a New York-based graphic designer and typographer. He has his own design firm—Sagmeister Inc.—in New York City. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.

Biography[link]

Sagmeister studied graphic design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He later received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York. He began his design career at the age of 15 at "Alphorn", an Austrian Youth magazine, which is named after the traditional Alpine musical instrument.^[1]

In 1991, he moved to Hong Kong to work with Leo Burnett's Hong Kong Design Group. In 1993, he returned to New York to work with Tibor Kalman's M&Co design company. His tenure there was short lived, as Kalman soon decided to retire from the design business to edit Colors magazine for the Benetton Group in Rome.^[2]

Stefan Sagmeister proceeded to form the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed branding, graphics, and packaging for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, the Guggenheim Museum and Time Warner. Sagmeister Inc. has employed designers including Martin Woodtli, and Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker, who later formed Karlssonwilker.

Stefan Sagmeister is a long-standing artistic collaborator with musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed. He is the author of the design monograph "Made You Look" which was published by Booth-Clibborn editions.

Solo shows on Sagmeister, Inc.'s work have been mounted in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Berlin, Japan, Osaka, Prague, Cologne, and Seoul. He teaches in the graduate department of the School of Visual Arts in New York and has been appointed as the Frank Stanton Chair at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York.

His motto is "Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution."^[1]

Sagmeister goes on a year-long sabbatical around every seven years, where he does not take work from clients. Currently on one in Bali, Indonesia, he is resolute about this, even if the work is tempting, and has displayed this by declining an offer to design a poster for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Sagmeister spends the year experimenting with personal work and refreshing himself as a designer.^[3]

Awards[link]

Sagmeister received a Grammy Award in 2005 in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category for art directing Once in a Lifetime box set by Talking Heads. He received a second Grammy Award for his design of the David Byrne and Brian Eno album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today in the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package category on January 31, 2010.

In 2005, Sagmeister won the Communications Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.^[4]

Further reading[link]

• Sagmeister, Stefan: Made You Look - Peter Hall (Booth-Clibborn, 2001) ISBN 978-1-86154-207-6; also Abrams paperback edition (2009): ISBN 978-0-8109-0597-9
• Sagmeister, Stefan; Things I have learned in my life so far (2008) New York:Abrams, ISBN 978-0-8109-9529-1
• website associated with above book: www.ThingsIHaveLearnedInMyLife.com

See also[link]

• Category:Albums with cover art by Stefan Sagmeister

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (May 2011)

External links[link]

• Sagmeister Inc.
• London Design Museum's entry for Sagmeister
• Portraits of Stefan Sagmeister @ The Design Museum by Bartolomy
• 7 rules for making more happiness