• Violet Kitchen | Rev. Diane Sullivan

Seven Days prides itself on being a writers' newspaper. That is, a publication that devotes as much energy and resources into the craft of writing as it does into sourcing, reporting and all other aspects of news gathering. How we tell stories is of critical importance. This makes the Cartoon Issue — our 11th annual —something of an oddity, because we ask our writers to do a curious thing: Get out of the way.

In a typical feature story, images (photos, usually) augment the writing. But in the visual medium of cartooning, it's the other way around. Words are used only in service to the artwork and, ideally, sparingly so. That's a challenging exercise for reporters used to telling stories in thousands of words. Here, they get a couple hundred, if that.

But the graphic format has distinct advantages. Instead of describing how glassblowing artists bring kids' visions of fantastical creatures to life, we can show you, as Jennifer Sutton and artist Ezra Veitch do in a cartoon about the "Glasstastic" exhibit in Brattleboro.

Or, with science and sight gags, we can unfurl the real-life mystery of how a rare Bahamian rodent ended up in a taxidermy exhibit at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, as artist Kristen Shull does in her illustration of Carolyn Shapiro's story.

Steve Goldstein's comic about cyclist-inventor Steve Norman and his latest biking innovation benefits from the technical visual style of neuroscience illustrator Annabel Driussi. Meanwhile, the lawn-mowing sheep that Ken Picard visited at Bridport's Long Cloud Farm are rendered in exquisitely cute detail by animal lover Julianna Brazill.

Music editor Chris Farnsworth and artist Ellie Liota are both fans of the mystical American composer Moondog. That shared affinity is evident in their cartoon collaboration about a Burlington musician keeping Moondog's music alive. Artist and writer Frances Cannon collaborated with, well, herself on a visual book review of I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai.

Food writer Melissa Pasanen and artist Emily Rhain Andrews round up the new crop of food carts on the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington this summer. And on the cover, Violet Kitchen previews all the cartoon stories appearing in this issue, proving once and for all that a picture really is worth (at least) a thousand words.