In this week’s special edition of Illustrated PEN, Guest Editor Meg Lemke presents “Lines Drawn”—a series of illustrations, by parents and teachers, on caring for children in an era of continued school shootings. View the full series and Lemke’s introduction here, and learn more about the young activists against gun violence who will receive this year’s PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award here.


Rachel Masilamani is a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist who has been amassing a unique and significant body of work since the dawn of the century.  She started off strong, being awarded a Xeric Grant for the first issue her series, RPM Comics, and has continued to craft her finely nuanced, personal comics in small run self-published comics and anthologies like the Indiana ReviewGraphic Classics and Aster(ix).  She is currently working on a new graphic novel, Nonpartum, which is being published in installments on Mutha Magazine.