2009 Rewind: The Year of Secret Identities, Part Two

We've been looking back on the events and milestones that made 2009 the year of the SI Universe. Last week's post focused on the beginning of the year and our debut appearances at NYCC and ECAASU. Today, we'll focus on the the launch of the book and our swings through Chicago and the midwest.

While the first part of the year was all about getting hyped for the publication of the book on April 15, the press and promotion we did January-March paled in comparison to the seemingly endless touring and appearances that made up most of April and May. We kicked the whole thing off on March 30 in West Lafayette, IN at Purdue University. Joined by the illustrious (and Lafayette homeboy) Bernard Chang, our first college visit and workshop was a rousing success! The next day, we hopped in the car for the 2 hour drive to Champaign, IL to speak at the University of Illinois. In addition to a lunchtime discussion and evening workshop, we were also interviewed by the local public radio program "Afternoon Magazine" (which you can hear here -- beginning about five minutes into the program in the link). Of course, there's no rest for the wicked, so we packed up and headed straight to the city of Chicago for a midday signing event at the totally awesome comic shop Challengers Comics + Conversation followed by a presentation at the University of Illinois-Chicago that evening. We were also given the great honor of guest lecturing at Professor Schaafsma's American Studies class while we were at UIC. Finally, we wrapped up our tour through the Big Ten a few miles north of Chicago at Northwestern University in Evanston. By then, the three of us were pretty exhausted after visiting four schools, and driving hundreds of miles, in four days... as you can probably tell by watching this promo we shot for TurtlistMedia after our Northwestern gig:



I mean, I was so tired, I got the website's name wrong! (Sorry, Jason!)

And that was the end of our swing through the Midwest (though Parry loved Chicago so much, he came back a week later to speak at Columbia College!) Of course, April was also the month in which the book finally came out, and so I can't forget the fact that on its pub date, we got a nice little promo on ABC News, intro'd by Charlie Gibson himself!

While I planned to include our NY and LA launches in this post, I think they deserve their own. So check back tomorrow to hear about our events at the Time Life building in NYC and the Japanese American National Museum in LA.