The Writer’s Block is hosting an event featuring Shwa Laytart, the countercultural mastermind behind of AvantPop Books. Shwa is also a writer, and he’s got an illustrated children’s book coming out whose title could confuse some readers.

It’s called The Gray Areas Podcast' with Gibby Grey & Tarda the Mutant Water-bear. But the event is not a podcast — that’s just a device for the book’s spacey, fantastical narrative, which involves two hosts. One is an alien, the other is a mutant water-bear, and their schtick is gallivanting across the universe, through portal after portal, and engaging with various different creatures and species -- and podcasting all about it along the way. Giving visuals to the whole thing is illustrator Bluumangoo, a local art teacher and tattoo artist.