GMIC Board Welcomes Esther Saltzman and Gianna Paniagua

The Graphic Medicine International Collective (GMIC) is thrilled to announce the addition of two new members to its board:

Esther Saltzman, PhD, is the Nursing Liaison for GMIC. Through graphic medicine, she has been able to combine her background in nursing with her teaching of literature. She has taught graphic medicine classes through the English Departments at the Memphis College of Art and at California State University, Los Angeles. She is the co-editor of Drawn from the Classics, Essays on Graphic Adaptations of Literary Works, and has written on comics and nursing in the Journal of Radiology Nursing. While at the Memphis College of Art, she collaborated with comics and illustration professors to have students produce patient education materials for the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital diabetes and asthma clinics. Currently, she is in collaborative talks to facilitate conversations among various nursing professionals and educators. Having found a home in the graphic medicine community, Esther is also interested in facilitating various collaborations and partnerships among graphic medicine health professionals, artists, educators, and enthusiasts.

Gianna Paniagua is a two-time heart transplant recipient of 33 years, papercutting sculptor, and graphic medicine artist who is from and based in NYC. She utilizes her lifetime of experiences in medicine to create artwork about the dualities of the human body, as well as comics that propose questions about the chronic illness patient experience. In 2014 she received the Grand Prize for the Emerging Young Artist award from The Kennedy Center, and has collaborated with The Smithsonian, Genentech, and SFMOMA to exhibit her handcut paper sculptures. She earned her MFA in visual art from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2018. In 2019 she came back to her hometown to attend Columbia University’s Postbaccalaureate Premed Program with the intention of applying to medical school, and earned her Master’s in Narrative Medicine from Columbia in 2024. Her lifelong goal is to find creative solutions to problems that exist in the field of transplantation for young adult patients. Her comic “Are We Ever Really Recovered?” was published in the Johns Hopkins medical journal, Literature and Medicine, and she regularly collaborates with the Columbia Surgery social media account for comics meant for an audience of medical professionals. Gianna publishes the Comics Corner column in Bonus Days Magazine, which depicts stories around organ transplantation and the importance of community. Based on what she was lacking in her youth, Gianna founded a peer-led young adult support group for solid organ transplant recipients around the world ages 18-47 that allows members to chat 24/7. In her free time, you can find her somewhere in the city on a bus sketching while on her way to buy more fountain pen ink.

GMIC looks forward to working with Esther and Gianna to advance our mission of promoting the work and community of Graphic Medicine.