More Weight by Ben Wickey: w/ Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair and Victor Rees

Doors 6pm

Start 6.30pm

Join us at Swedenborg Hall to hear Ben Wickey discuss his debut graphic novel, More Weight: A Salem Story, with Alan Moore (joining by remote link), Iain Sinclair and Victor Rees. The discussion will be followed by a book signing. Organized as part of a series of events linked to the exhibition Elective Affinities.

“Every word is an accusation…and every whisper kills.” This staggering graphic novel explores the infamous Salem witch trials and the long shadows they cast more than 300 years later.

In Salem, Massachusetts, 1692 is a year of terror. When accusations of witchcraft plunge the community into paranoia and death, curmudgeonly farmer Giles Corey and his great-souled wife Martha are forced to confront their troubled pasts, fighting to hold onto their principles even at the cost of their lives. In the 1860s, famed writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow stroll the streets of Salem together, reflecting on their own dark connections to those wicked days. Today, graphic novelist Ben Wickey wrestles with the complex legacy of “the Witch City” and what it shows us about the best and worst of humanity.

Based on true events, set in three centuries, and hand-drawn over a decade, More Weight is a stunning visual symphony — a unique and profound inquiry into the infamous Salem witch trials and the long shadows they still cast on us all."

BEN WICKEY is a Massachusetts-born artist, writer, and animator who graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. He is one of the contributing illustrators of Alan Moore and Steve Moore’s The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, the illustrator of Ki Longfellow’s The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, and the director of several stop-motion animated short films, including the award-winning The House of the Seven Gables. In 2025, after a decade of development, he made his solo graphic novel debut with More Weight: A Salem Story. He lives in California with his beloved wife and cats.