Description

The 3rd Thing, paperback

Publication Date: October 8, 2024

Publisher Marketing:

Arctic Playis a drama, a dirge, an expedition log, a series of poetic experiments, a comic book. Mapping an Arctic imaginary of beings and landforms onto a shifting stage of woven and layered papers, Mita Mahato conjures geographic and creative uncertainty as the necessary condition for navigating the climate crisis and its sorrows.

Mita Mahatois a comix artist and poet who assembles her panels and pages with cut and collaged papers. Building on the long tradition of cartoonists who direct the mediums unique juxtaposition of word and image toward political and social reform, her work joins fragments of used and discarded materialsold newspapers, obsolete maps, junk mail, packaging scrapsin poetic experiments that dramatize entangled processes of death and renewal, specifically within the context of ecosystemic loss under capitalism. Her poetry comix have appeared in places includingEcotone,Iterant,Shenandoah,Coast/NoCoast,ANMLY, andDrunken Boat, as well as in the collectionIn Between, published by Pleiades and listed inThe Best American Comics of 2019. Her work has been supported by Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), Loghaven, Storyknife, Black Earth Institute, Mineral School, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and The Arctic Circle. Her mother was Prem, born in Bihar. Her father was Basanta, born in Bengal. She currently lives in Seattle.