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

In case you were unable to join us Sunday, May 24 for our eighth Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercise we did together. Our host was Shelley Wall, GMIC board member, medical illustrator, and an assistant professor in the Biomedical Communications graduate program at the University of Toronto (UofT). Our theme was time. Shelley quoted Nick Sousanis:“In comics, time is written in space.”  To demonstrate different ways time can be represented in a comic, Shelley shared pages from the work of Emily Taylor, Courtney Angermeier & Jeff Benham, Bruno Schaub, and Richard Hahn. The drawing prompt… Read More

In case you were unable to join us for our seventh Drawing Together event, here is a recap of the exercises we did together. Our host was Susan Squier, a GMIC board member, scholar, and artist. She is a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto, and author of many texts, including Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor. Today we are going to pay close attention to insects, and follow them into their world. Pause the video as the exercises begin, set your own timer, do the exercises, then return to the video. So, here are those exercises again: Exercise I: set… Read More

guest post by Tiffany Liu On March 27 2020, the United Nations announced a GLOBAL CALL TO CREATIVES: An Open Brief from the United Nations. In the brief, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres stated “we are in an unprecedented situation and the normal rules no longer apply. We cannot resort to the usual tools in such unusual times. The creativity of the response must match the unique nature of the crisis – and the magnitude of the response must match its scale.” Inspired by the UN’s call, Gen Z Group, a Singapore-based educational media company, decided to adapt the Handbook of… Read More

I have known since childhood that I wanted to make comics. I started making doodle comics in high school (or “scribble comics” as I called them) about the lives of me and my friends. I didn’t get serious about making them until I was in my mid 20s and went to a meeting for the DC based comics collective Square City Comics. I then went to the Center For Cartoon Studies to get my MFA, though I knew that I never wanted to make comics my career (I had just been fortunate enough to pursue it as my passion).  The… Read More