Drawing Lessons: The Comics of Everyday Life

Alison Bechdel has a thirty-year career writing, drawing, and self-syndicating the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. That generational chronicle ran regularly in over fifty LGBT publications in North America and the UK. After setting aside Dykes to Watch Out For in 2008, she edited Best American Comics 2011 and published a second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama, in 2012. She has drawn comics for Slate, McSweeney's, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, and Granta, and her work is widely anthologized and translated. She is a 2014 MacArthur Fellow, a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their creative activities without obligations.