Live video chat with Ben Katchor, David L. Ulin at 10 a.m. Tuesday

Join David L. Ulin and author and artist Ben Katchor at 10 a.m. Tuesday for a live video chat about the art of storytelling and cities, real and imagined.

Katchor is a visionary comic artist, a MacArthur “Genius� fellow who has made urban landscapes part of his subject. “Born in 1951, he makes comics that bristle with an off-kilter melancholy reminiscent of New York in the 1970s, a city in decline but also oddly full of life,� Ulin wrote in a review of his latest collection.

That collection is “Hand-Drying in America,� published in March by Pantheon. “Think of ‘Hand-Drying in America,’� Ulin wrote, “as an atlas of Katchor’s imaginary city, a series of maps intended to chart its life.�

“‘Our knowledge of the domestic interiors of a city is limited to the homes of a small circle of friends, acquaintances, and relations,� Katchor writes in “Open House Season,� a strip on the pleasures of the real estate open house. “We are born, visit a narrow range of apartments, and then die in relative ignorance of how life was lived in our own time.�

Ulin will talk to Katchor about this book and an earlier project, the newspaper strip “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.� You can ask a question too when you join our Spreecast at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Katchor comes to Los Angeles’ Skirball Center on April 10. Tickets are free; reservations are recommended.

ALSO:

Say hello to National Poetry Month!

Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads panned -- on Goodreads

National Magazine Award finalists include Los Angeles, Byliner

Carolyn Kellogg: Join me on Twitter, Facebook and Google+