Comics As Therapy and Healing In 2017, before I released Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This,  I did a short comic simply titled ‘Mental Health” and a mini comic (as in size it was about 4x3in) called ‘My Mental Health Does Not Determine My Success’. In both of those comics I talked about having bipolar and PTSD and about how I was afraid for people to know because they would call me crazy. At the end of 2017, I released an early version of Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This, and debuted it at Short Run Seattle. It… Read More

“Self Care in an Uncaring World,” or Tips on Thriving The Apocalypse is a free interactive comic encouraging self care during difficult times. This comic was to be part of my workshop at the Graphic Medicine 2020 conference in Toronto, but for obvious reasons, that doesn’t work. So I’m happy to have the chance to share it here.   Originally conceived after a certain current administration began a policy of detaining children at the border, it became difficult to manage my own well-being when so many people who were suffering. I know many people, including myself, felt helpless and overwhelmed. I… Read More

I am Raghavi R. K., Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Languages at VIT-AP University, India. I often doodle as a pastime and draw short comics as a creative means to make sense of the world around me. Somehow seeing things mapped out on a paper enables me to process information in a better way. During the recent nation-wide lockdown, I started drawing to keep myself occupied, but on April 2nd, 2020, everything changed drastically for it was the first day I heard reports about violence against doctors and other frontline healthcare workers who were struggling to reduce… Read More

To respond to the cancellation of our 2020 Graphic Medicine conference in Toronto, to combat the social isolation of pandemic-related lockdowns, and to support and promote community, the Graphic Medicine International Cooperative (GMIC) launched a free weekly virtual meet-up called “Drawing Together” on April 6. We provided a Zoom link, a topic, and a group facilitator. Members of the world-wide Graphic Medicine community gathered to draw, support one another, and share. To learn more about previous Drawing Together sessions, check out our archive. We will now be offering our Drawing Together sessions monthly. More specifically, sessions will be the last… Read More

The Network of National Libraries of Medicine Northeast Region Grant Awarded for Digital Graphic Medicine Library Collection at MCPHS The Network of National Libraries of Medicine Northeast Region (NNLM NER) has awarded Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences a $7000 grant to acquire and determined best practices in collecting digital Graphic Medicine content for libraries. The one-year pilot program, “Digital Graphic Medicine Catalog: Comics and Graphic Novels Electronically Available for Healthcare,” expands on the University’s preexisting special collection, allowing it to address remote access to texts whose physical copies may either be limited or inaccessible, particularly during the COVID-19… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our fourth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Michael Green, GMIC board member, physician, bioethicist, and artist. We started the session with a fun warm-up exercise frequently used by Lynda Barry: Drawing with your eyes closed. Set a timer for one minute, hover your pen over your blank paper, close your eyes and don’t peek until the one-minute timer goes off. In one minute each: Draw a giraffe Draw a mermaid Draw Batman throwing up For extra fun, watch Michael do… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our 12th Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was MK Czerwiec, a GMIC board member, nurse, and cartoonist. She is a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto,  the creator of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, and editor of the forthcoming Menopause: A Comic Treatment. Our warm up exercise came courtesy of Marek Bennett’s Comics Camp (highly recommend!) Set a time for  five minutes, put on some music that you love, and draw as many smiling faces as you can…. Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our tenth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Alex Thomas, GMIC board member, physician, and cartoonist. With his partner Gary Ashwal, Alex creates educational comics for their company, Booster Shot Media. Our warm-up exercise was a blind contour drawing. They are always fun! Here are the directions: (5 minutes) Pick a nearby object Fix your eyes on the outline of the object and track the edges with your eyes.  At the same time, draw each contour you see very slowly, in… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our tenth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Ebru Ustundag, GMIC board member, a critical feminist geographer interested in intersections of health/care and social justice.  Resources of cartoonists of color were shared. Drawing While Black Directory Cartoonist of Color Directory ALA Graphic Novel & Comics Roundtable Black Lives Matter Comics Reading List More  relevant databases. Our warm-up exercise was to think about breath/breathing. We started with a quote from 13th-century Persian poet and scholar, Rumi.   For the second exercise, we… Read More

“Comics will have an important role in creating our post-Covid world.” – Dana Walrath In case you were unable to join us for our third Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Dana Walrath, GMIC board member, artist, writer, and medical anthropologist. Our theme was “pandemic as a portal.” Dana stated, “For me, the overwhelming emotions of these few months have been disgust and shame. It is one thing to teach and write about structural violence and structural racism, stigma, and genocide, but to actually see it unfold day by day… Read More