Back in March, Chronicle Books published one of my sketchbook pages in their neat little book, Everything Is Going To Be OK.

Get it for $10 →

Finally! After almost 2 years, Newspaper Blackout is out in the wild. You can buy it now wherever books are sold.

Thanks SO MUCH to everyone for all your links and tweets and support. This book would not exist without you.

You can see a ton of images of the book free for blogging/spreading around in my Press and Blogger’s Kit on Flickr.

Here’s a sampling of the wonderful press we’ve been getting:

“The poems resurrect the newspaper when everyone else is declaring it dead.”
—The New Yorker

“Highbrow/brilliant…”
—New York Magazine

“Kleon manages to turn the paper of record into visually stark nuggets of poetry and wit.”
—Texas Monthly

“[A] sense of play infuses the poems—short pieces that touch on first sex and outer space, in a voice that slips from funny to elegiac…”
—The Austin Chronicle

If you haven’t purchased your copy yet, please consider doing so!

We’re having a release party here in Austin tonight at BookPeople. 7PM. There will be newspapers, Sharpies, and chocolate chip cookies.

And finally, here’s the trailer for the book with music from the amazing White Denim. Feel free to spread it around!

My poem, “Summer In Texas,” was recently featured in The Lifted Brow, a biannual journal in Australia. I got my contributor copy yesterday, and it’s a really nice book — full of good writers, artists, and musicians (it comes with 2 CDs.) Check it out.

Here’s a fun example of selling your by-products: The Texas Observer ran one of my cartoons in a feature on The Minor Mishap Marching Band in their November ’09 issue.

I drew the band at the Austinist Local Music Is Sexy event and the writer (and band member) Michael May saw the drawings and T.O. bought one. (Thanks, Michael!)

My friend Marsha Riti has a photo in the feature as well.

Pardon the crummy iPhone shots…

When my father-in-law was down from Cleveland last week, he brought me an envelope sent to our old address, postmarked Europe. I couldn’t imagine what European would be sending me anything, so it was a real treat and a surprise to find two copies of La Cagouille No. 6—a little zine that a couple of French folks put out. I had totally forgotten that way back Gabriel Papapietro had asked me if they could print an old comic of mine called “Rendezvous.” The package contained a note from Gabriel…so nice to get handwritten letters!

Other than my comic, everything else is in French, so I’m piecing my way through. Here’s a spread from Gabriel’s comic, “Royan Sur Brie,” which you can read online if you add him as a friend on Myspace.

Very cool. Thanks for the mail, Gabriel!