Paul Madonna’s popular comic, All Over Coffee” had been running for twelve years in the San Francisco Chronicle when he
was evicted from his longtime home and studio in the Mission District, ground-zero in the tech wars” transforming the
city. Suddenly finding himself yet another victim of San Francisco’s overheated boomtown housing market, with its
soaring prices and rampant evictions, Madonna decided to use his comic as a cathartic public platform to explore the
experience, and to capture the complex, highly charged atmosphere of a cityand a lifebeing forced through a painful
transition.
In a series of drawings and stories, Madonna evokes the sense of induced by being forced from his home, and the
roil of emotions that ensue as he enters into the city’s brutal competition for a place to live. The line between
reality and surreality begins to blur almost immediately, in real life and in his comic. Absurd, maddening, and
all-too-poignant, these drawings and stories capture the spirit of not just San Francisco, but a cultural epidemic that
has now spread to cities around the world.
"For years I've been intrigued and charmed by Paul Madonna’s careful and thoughtful drawings of overlooked nooks and
by-ways of San Francisco. In his new book he now combines them with manic, delirious, and increasingly paranoid writings
as he struggles with the all-consuming City dilemma of gentrification; of who came first, who gets to stay, which wave
of usurpers is more 'real' and deserving than the next, and finally, what happens when someone decides it’s your turn to
go. Beautiful and engaging."--Sandow Birk, visual artist
"Madonna has created a kind of San Francisco Realism, details so absurd, cruel, and beautiful that they can only come
from our infuriating home. If Charlie Kaufman squatted in an illegal sublet in Armistead Maupin's mind, this would be
the lovely tenant."--Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life
"Paul Madonna's On to the Next Dream is bleak, terrifying, hilarious and lovely."--MariNaomi, author and illustrator of
Turning Japanese
"Simply delightful. I really don't like much out there, I really don't, but On to the Next Dream I couldn't put down. It
was sharp, clever, honest, and maybe the funniest book on eviction ever written."--New Yorker cartoonist and New York
Times bestselling author, Bob Eckstein, Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores
Praise for Everything is its own reward by Paul Madonna:
"The book is fantastic. Of time and tenderness. Beautiful drawings. Beautiful text. Ethereal and serious at once. The
book is its own reward."--Maira Kalman, illustrator
"Mesmerizing . . . When his international images are paired with his sparse, poetic wordssometimes thought-provoking
one-liners such as 'You don't get anywhere without searching' and sometimes long, meandering sections of dialogue and
storythe effect is haunting."--Oprah.com
Paul Madonna is a San Francisco-based artist and writer. He is the creator of the comic series All Over Coffee” and the
author of two books, All Over Coffee and Everything is its own reward. His drawings and stories have appeared in
numerous books and journals as well as galleries and museums, including the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum and
the Oakland Museum of California.