Join us to for our first graphic novel event in association with the Graphic Novel Reading Room.
Miriam Gold will be in conversation with Gabi Putnoki, about 'Elena': A Handmade Life', a beautiful graphic memoir about her grandmother's life, and of love, family and fearless women.
Elena Zadik refugee twice before she was 17, training in medicine in Sheffield during World War 2, she was as brilliant a doctor as she was terrible a driver (she never took a test). Following her childhood in Ukraine during the Russian civil war in a tiny Jewish family (her parents were first cousins) to a briefly peaceful childhood in Germany, then to the UK as lone teenage refugee in 1937, the story shows Elena breaking glass ceilings to become a doctor. Practising in working class Sheffield she sees terrible deprivation and rejoices at the founding of the NHS, to which she gives 40 years’ service. She finds belonging in a Lancastrian mill and mining town as a GP, witnessing the destruction of the 1980s on
the industry and culture of the town, as her own career and life wanes. Her parents die in Auschwitz, she spends decades fighting for restitution, and then shares the money she finally receives among her nine grandchildren.
Miriam, her eldest granddaughter, tells her story reflecting on their unconventional relationship and how trauma travels down through the generations. Elena was an unintentionally hilarious woman, often difficult, always opinionated and deeply resourceful. Her hands (minus her left index finger which she slammed in garage doors) were always busy and form the heart of this timely graphic story of the ordinary extraordinary resilience of women.
Miriam Gold is an artist and teacher from London. She has completed international residencies and been commissioned by the V&A and the Barbican, and was selected for the Emerging Writer’s Programme at the London Library for her first book. Miriam holds an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and a BA in History and Politics from the University of Liverpool. She teaches Art and Photography in a large secondary school in East London.
Gabi Putnoki is a comics producer and founder of Graphic Novel Reading Room, a Sheffield-based, UK-wide pop-up comics reading event.