On Tuesday, January 19th, I participated in a press conference at the headquarters of Amnesty International in Paris to speak about RIDEP, the well-known cartoon conference that is held annually in Carquefou, France. What was unusual about this was that it was a press conference of cartoonists who are women, talking about what it means in their countries to be women cartoonists. The women participating in the festival (although not all were at the press conference) were: Hana Hajjar from Saudi Arabia, Caroline Rutz from Switzerland, Firoozeh Muzaffari from Iran, Marlene Pohle from Germany (and also Argentina), Cathy Wilcox from Australia, Dominique LeMarie and Corrine Rey from France.
Beth Arnold, a writer friend who lives in Paris and who writes a blog for Huffingtonpost.com, was at the conference and posted two items on the conference and festival: