Real Art Ways is hosting a conversation with artist and Cartoonist Diane DiMassa on September 25

Hothead Paisan: A Conversation with Diane DiMassa
Real Art Ways • 56 Arbor St, Hartford, CT 06106
September 25, 2025 at 6:30 pm
Click here to purchase tickets here.

Hothead Paisan: A Conversation with Diane DiMassa

On Thursday, September 25, 6:30 pm, Real Art Ways presents a conversation with artist and cartoonist Diane DiMassa, led by Alex Dueben, a writer who covers comics, poetry, books and art.

A conversation with Hothead Paisan at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut in September 2025 — Image via NY Review Comics

General admission is free, although members of the community are encouraged to register in advance. There is also a second ticket option ($35) that includes the purchase of DiMassa’s new book.

There is a new and dangerous terrorist on the loose! Run to your local feminist oriented bookstore to catch her in action—and to witness the rage! She’s Hothead Paisan, homicidal lesbian terrorist, and she is mad!

So began the original 1991 press release of Hothead Paisan, Diane DiMassa’s DIY comic-zine sensation. Hothead quickly became a stalwart of the underground scene, an embodiment of lesbian rage that never backed down and never played nice (which doesn’t mean she didn’t have fun). Armed with an acid tongue and a loose trigger finger, Hothead and her constant feline companion, Chicken, unleashed their murderous wrath on all “oozing pussheads from the planet Gawk” – any chauvinist or creep stupid enough to get in their way. Violent, darkly comic, but reserving a surprisingly tender, thoughtful core, Hothead Paisan is radical revenge by way of stylish exaggeration, an act of catharsis on behalf of all pissed-off, fed-up, strung-out women.

Presented as a collection alongside an exclusive interview with DiMassa, Hothead Paisan is at its core a frank and hilarious portrait of life on the margins and a dispatch from an era when queer liberation had fangs. Hothead’s misadventures – with her cat Chicken, nagging double Personality #2, indefatigable best friend Roz, and a slew of comrades and lovers – unveil dystopic realities as well as utopian imaginaries like, as Sarah Schulman puts it in her introduction, “a world beyond the gender binary before the language had even cohered.”

What people are saying

“We need Hothead now more than ever.” – Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes to Watch Out For

“Diane DiMassa can thrill the female soul…fulfilling an untold number of rush-hour fantasies.” – The New York Times

“Hothead is a one-woman revolution … a far-out, hilarious reminder of how your own rage could drive you insane.” – Out Magazine

“The bible of man-hating ball busters driven over the edge of insanity.”

– Sarah Schulman

More info here. Advance tickets are available here.

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Real Art Ways is hosting a conversation with artist and Cartoonist Diane DiMassa on September 25