I recently received through the mail the latest issue of Midstream: A Quarterly Jewish Review, which I get due to the fact that I’m editor of Philip Roth Studies.  As I was thumbing through this issue, I chanced upon an article by journalist Gary Shapiro (whom I have met a couple of times) on the topic of recent Jewish American literature, “Conference Report: Trends in Jewish American Literature.”  Obviously this topic caught my interest, and as I read the first sentences of Shapiro’s piece I realized that this article was actually about a MLA Convention session that I participated in back in 2009, one devoted to recent developments in Jewish American literature.  My portion concerned Jewish comics, where I discussed authors such as Will Eisner, Ben Katchor, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Joe Kubert, and Harvey Pekar.  He actually devotes three paragraphs to my talk, a good part of the essay, in fact.  I remember Shapiro being there in the audience–he and I even spoke briefly after the session–but I had no idea that he would write up the event in Midstream.  A nice surprise.  This should complement my recent work on Jewish comics, an edited collection that I’ve just begun to work on.  Check out this article in the latest issue of Midstream.