In this week’s Illustrated PEN, guest editor MariNaomi presents an excerpt from author Jeremy Sorese’s debut graphic novel, Curveball, a science-fiction and end-of-love story available from Nobrow.

MariNaomi writes: “Jeremy Sorese first appeared on my radar with his hilarious, thoughtful, and touching diary comics. When I started reading tweets about his graphic novel  Curveball, how important of a book it was to my genderqueer, comics-reading friends, I knew I had to pick it up. I wasn’t disappointed. Sorese has created a vast world stemmed from ambitious ideas, rendered in gorgeous, breathtaking art. Yet the story is easy to swallow, as the center of the book is about a person you might relate to if you’ve ever been hopelessly young.”


Jeremy Sorese is an illustrator based out of Brooklyn, New York. Curveball, a queer sci-fi graphic novel nominated for a LAMBDA literary award, is his first book, published by Nobrow (2015). More of his work can be found at jeremysorese.com.

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.