The Illustrated PEN is a weekly online series that aspires to be at the intersection of literature, journalism, and visual storytelling, where images and words come together in an ever-emerging and essential creative form. We’ll feature fiction and nonfiction graphic narratives, comics journalism and illustrated reportage, stories of social justice and personal stories that can’t be told through words alone.

This week, we feature a comic strip by The New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly about imprisoned journalist Khadija Ismayilova, recipient of the 2015 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. The piece is part of a larger series of comics and cartoons commissioned by PEN with the help of Liza Donnelly and The New Yorker Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff to draw attention to Ismayilova’s case and to pressing issues of freedom of expression in Azerbaijan.