Illustrated PEN
The Illustrated PEN 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 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.
Those Other Nurses
What starts as a memory riff on the kind of punning coincidence that puts the very sleep-deprived into giggle fits … evolves into a powerful meditation on where we… More
The Literal World
"The piece is a meditation both on how we apply the filter of social media to ourselves and others, and how the internet can actually help bridge gaps between… More
Why Not Nat Turner? Kyle Baker on Drawing Our Erased History
Millions of taxpayer dollars have been allotted to immortalizing the glory of those who fought to preserve slavery, yet few are willing to speak out for a man who… More
Lighten Up
Is the request to take down the tone of a character’s skin color ever unbiased? What does it mean to be a Black artist speaking his truth to power? More
Rolling Blackouts
Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts is ambitious comics journalism that, in the tradition of Joe Sacco’s The Fixer, attempts to unpack the embedded contradictions surrounding Americans reporting from the Middle… More
New Editors on the Illustrated PEN
By Antonio Aiello We launched the Illustrated PEN in the spring of 2015 with the graphic novel Baddawi, by Chicago-based Palestinian artist and organizer Leila Abdelrazaq. The series aspired to… More
PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals
In the latest installment of Illustrated PEN, Leela Corman, cartoonist and illustrator, reveals the intricate process of coming back to life after losing a child, dealing with grief, and… More
Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores
Illustrator Bob Eckstein speaks to artists and creators then draws and writes about 75 of the most magical bookstores around the world. More
An Excerpt from ‘The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks’
In 'The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death under Soviet Rule,' award-winnng illustrator Igort details the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist and human rights activist who spoke… More