Out & About: An illustrated BOOK of Walks in Philadelphia

From our friend @thelalatheory!!!

We're Katie and Joe, a married couple who make books and music together. We also love to go for long, meandering walks in the city, suburbs, and woods.

Out & About is a 100-page, fully illustrated book of our favorite walks in Philadelphia, the city where we live. It contains 15 walks, each with our personal narratives, a detailed, hand-drawn map of the route, and directions that you can follow yourself.

We began work on this project back in February, and to our surprise it became, in part, a chronicle of the dramatic changes we’ve been experiencing in our world and in the city we love. When the virus arrived in the U.S. and the quarantine started a lot of the things we loved to do were no longer possible--but one of the few things we could still do was take our walks. First thing in the morning; late in the evening; on large streets that have been closed to car traffic; in the city’s huge park system, much of which is wooded; and on little residential blocks: Our walks have been there for us, helping us heal our bodies and emotions. Please come along and join us as we take in the wonderful city of Philadelphia.

We wrote Out & About this spring and summer and hired illustrator and comics artist Ally Shwed to make the gorgeous cover drawing. The project was funded with a Kickstarter campaign that ended up being a big success, which allowed us to hire Ally to illustrate the entire book, complete with beautiful hand-drawn maps.