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.

Mita Mahato is a Seattle-based cut paper, collage, and comix artist whose work explores the transformative capacities of found and handmade papers. Her poetry comics have been collected in In Between (Pleiades Press 2017); published in Seattle Weekly, Mutha Magazine, and Drunken Boat; and exhibited in galleries across the country. In addition to serving on the board for Short Run Seattle and the steering committee for Graphic Medicine, she is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound.