Wed 9/9 @ noon
John Backderf aka Derf became a beloved northeast Ohio figure with his comic strip The City, featured in several area publications. Locals loved it for the way he worked in inside jokes about culture in this area.
But he won wider acclaim for his graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer, in which he related his own experiences going to high school in Richfield with the notorious mass murderer, reflecting on things that seemed off-kilter about him that teenagers weren’t experienced enough to interpret.
His new book Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio takes on another occurrence in northeast Ohio that also took on national significance: the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970 when the national guard killed four students during an anti-war protest. Although Derf was only 10 at the time and had no personal involvement as he did with Dahmer, he did research to reconstruct the backgrounds of the students who died.
Backderf will join the City Club of Cleveland for a livestreamed talk about his new book on the 50th anniversary of the KSU shootings and the cost of dissent then and now in America.
Go here to listen.
cityclub.org/kent-state-four-dead-in-ohio