Coney Island USA is proud to announce that the Royalty for the 36th Annual Mermaid Parade is Queen Amanda Palmer and King Neil Gaiman!!! Each a multimedia power house in their own right, our Royalty bring together a combined interest in arts and mythologies that nourish and sustain our aquatic artistic traditions!!!

Amanda Palmer is a singer, songwriter, playwright, piano-slayer, ukulele-enthusiast, and blogger who simultaneously embraces and explodes traditional frameworks of music, theatre, and art. She first came to prominence as one half of the Boston-based punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, earning global applause for their wide-ranging theatricality and inventive songcraft. Her solo career has proven equally brave and boundless, including such groundbreaking works as the fan-funded album "Theatre is Evil", which was supported by 25,000 fans on Kickstarter. In 2013 she presented “The Art of Asking” at the annual TED conference, which has since been viewed over 15 million times worldwide. The following year saw Palmer expand her philosophy into the New York Times best-seller, "The Art of Asking: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let People Help". Since 2015, Palmer has used Patreon, a patronage subscription crowdfunding platform, to fund the creation of her art work while enabling her to collaborate with artists all over the world with over 11,000 patrons supporting her creations each month.

Neil Gaiman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Norse Mythology, 2013 UK Book of the Year The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the Newbery and Carnegie Medal winning The Graveyard Book, as well as Coraline, Neverwhere, American Gods (now a Starz TV series) essay collection The View from the Cheap Seats and The Sandman series of graphic novels, among many other works. Neil is currently dividing his time between the UK, where he is turning Good Omens, a novel which he wrote with Terry Pratchett, into television, and the US, where he is Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Photo by Allan Amato.

The Mermaid Parade, is Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 1pm.