Our October Drawing Together meeting was hosted by Theresa Rojas, artist and professor of English at Modesto Junior College in Modesto, California. She is a member of the Graphic Medicine International Collective and the Founding Director of the Latinx Comic Arts Festival (LCAF). LCAF is the California Central Valley’s international celebration of Latinx comic arts creators and friends, highlighting Latinx cartoonists, writers, animators, artists, and comic arts educators.   From Theresa: (Video for these exercises will be posted soon.) “Today’s focus is SENSE MEMORY.  Sense memory refers to the emotional recall we experience through one or more of the five senses: taste, smell,… Read More

Our September, 2020 Drawing Together session was hosted by doctor and comic artist Ian Williams. Ian is the creator of The Bad Doctor, The Lady Doctor. Ian recently received an Arts Council grant to complete his trilogy with the book, The Sick Doctor. Ian also is the founder of this website and coined the term ‘graphic medicine’. Ian said: “Sometimes, particularly now as most news seems like bad news, it is good to focus on the Small Pleasures of Life. This session is inspired by Philippe Delerme’s book of that name, which I bought in the ’90s and which has often inspired… Read More

“The Most Costly Journey (El viaje más caro)” is an ethnographic cartooning project that employs collaborative storytelling as a tool to mitigate loneliness, isolation, and despair among Latin American migrant workers on Vermont dairy farms. The collected comics are now available for pre-order in an English language edition via the group’s Kickstarter (through 9 November 2020). The following is excerpted from the book’s preface by Julia Doucet (RN, Open Door Clinic), which describes the project’s genesis in her patients’ undiagnosed symptoms… I first met José Luis in 2017 when he came for an appointment at the Open Door Clinic in… Read More

My name is Joanna Conings and I am currently an international student from Belgium studying at Creighton University in the hope of obtaining my Master in English on the creative writing track. Since I arrived in the US I have been introduced to a complete new health care system which has been very difficult to navigate. I fell sick multiple times but had no american insurance. Thus, I discovered what it meant to be sick in the US when you are an immigrant. Last semester, I had a class named ‘The Rhetoric of Medicine’ led by Dr. Joshua Prenosil. We… Read More

We live in turbulent times. Graphic Medicine’s Drawing Together meetups, at first weekly and now monthly, have been a helpful community of practice as we navigate these waters. The following comic started as a rough, raw journal entry and a one-page comic at one of those meetups. Thank you for creating such a powerful space. Many thanks to critiquers and sensitivity readers. Creating this comic was hard, fulfilling and I wish such vivid examples did not come from too many cruel, personal stories. I hope it adds to the conversation, I hope you share it or use it as ammunition… Read More

Since March, when this site first started collecting comics about COVID-19, we have been adding comics as they appear or are sent to us. As of today, 87 comics  and 4 cartoon animations are linked on the site as they fall into six categories. In addition to comics, the listing closes with some non-comic pandemic resources. It’s becoming clear that this quantity of comics is becoming unwieldy to curate and read. So we will be considering reorganizing the collection soon. In the meantime, two adaptations. First, we will be posting the most recent comic in each category at the top… Read More

“Advocating for Yourself in a Medical Appointment” is my latest of several healthcare-centric comics created in the last year. I am interested in teaching others how to understand and access healthcare services despite inexperience or financial barriers. The for-profit healthcare model is inherently predatory. We need to feel confident in the ability to advocate for ourselves as patients and challenge the existing structure as activists. Accessing healthcare is tricky and I enjoy trying to distill that information into the most palatable format imaginable: cartoons! I have a BA in Recreation Therapy with a focus in geriatric mental health. I created… Read More

Graphic Medicine at PCA 2021 In conjunction with the Popular Culture Association (PCA) holding their 2021 conference in Boston, contributors and attendees of the New England Graphic Medicine (NEGM) Virtual Summit are proposing a slate of programming that now is welcoming additional participants. Two complete panels of 3-5 participants will be offering “Collaborating on and Creating Graphic Medicine” and “New England Graphic Medicine” line-ups, respectively. Potential speakers and topics currently include: Collaborating on and Creating Graphic Medicine Sarah Mausner (Teen Health Comics) Janine Georg (endometriosis) Maria Photinakis (mental illness and climate anxiety) New England Graphic Medicine Sarah Levin-Lederer A. David… Read More

Our August 2020 Drawing Together session was hosted by artist and educator Sarah Leavitt. She is the creator of Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me as well as Agnes, Murderess. She is a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. You can learn more about her work on her website, https://sarahleavitt.com and her Instagram, @Sarah_leav. In an effort to guide us toward the workshop’s focus, Sarah gave us a wonderful presentation on how her work has evolved over the past ten years. WARMUP: Sarah asked us to write down the… Read More