Lynda Barry

For years, Lynda Barry’s Ernie Pook’s Comeek made the back pages of alternative weeklies across the country worth reading. The adventures of Marlys, a geeky girl who aspired to be a revolutionary funk dancer in the seventies; her angsty, zitty older sister; and their loony, hookah-sucking Filipino relatives unfolded with humor, pain, beauty, and a self-consciousness that could be understood by anyone who was ever a dumb little kid, which is all of us. More recently, Barry has written novels and worked on her outsider-ish art from a top-secret and remote location somewhere in Wisconsin. 1 College St. N., Northfield; 507-646-4023; www.carleton.edu