Description
In 1996, everything about Joe Biel's life seemed like a mistake. He was 18, he lived in Cleveland, he got drunk every day, and he had mystery health problems and weird social tics. All his friends' lives were as bad or worse. To escape a nihilistic, apocalyptic worldview and to bring reading and documentation into a communal punk scene, he started assembling zines and bringing them in milk crates to underground punk shows. Eventually this became Microcosm Publishing. But Biel's head for math was stronger than his ability to relate to people, and it wasn't until he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome that it all began to fall into place. This is the story of how, over 20 years, one person turned a litany of continuing mistakes and seeming wrong turns into a happy, fulfilled life and a thriving publishing business that defies all odds.
About the Author
Joe Biel is a self-made autistic publisher and filmmaker who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock. Biel is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, Publishers Weekly's #1 fastest growing publisher of 2022. Biel has been featured in Time Magazine, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Art of Autism, Reading Glasses, PBS, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll. Biel is the author of People's Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business, Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business on the Spectrum, Manspressions: Decoding Men's Behavior, Make a Zine, The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting, Proud to be Retarded, Bicycle Culture Rising, and more. Biel is the director of five feature films and hundreds of short films, including Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, $100 & A T-Shirt, and the Groundswell film series. Biel lives in Portland, Ore. Find out more at joebiel.net Joyce Brabner and her family are the subject of the 2004 HBO film American Splendor about her and her late-husband, Harvey Pekar, and their life spent expanding the comic book medium beyond superheroes. She is the author of numerous books, including Our Cancer Year and nonfiction comic collaborations with Alan Moore, among many others. She lives in Cleveland, OH.
