No experience needed!

This class is designed for the writer who dreams of seeing their words paired with their art; for the artist who wants to see their art elevated with a memoirist’s perspective; for the amateur who’s never tried crafting a comic of their own but has always wanted to; for the art-proficient who just need an excuse to get back to it. No matter your level of experience, this comics workshop is for you.

In this 6-week workshop, we will celebrate the art of diary comics—sometimes called graphic narratives, often short, simplistic comics blending memoir with vivid emotion—and the intersection of writing and drawing, how each is truly needed to make a piece resonate and pop. In each class, we will pull from a wide array of comic examples (and other writings, too), apply what we learn to your own diary comics, and then we’ll workshop them together. As we learn and grow in this exciting medium, we’ll share weekly prompted doodles to see how we are putting it all together.

We’ll look at work by Kristen Radtke, Adrian Tomine, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Lee Lei, Mira Jacob, Gene Luen Yang, Ebony Flowers, Craig Thompson, and many others.

Online

Wednesdays 7-9 PM EST

June 14 - July 19

Instructor: Robert James Russell

Robert James Russell is the author of the forthcoming graphic memoir Hard Body: A Personal History of My Form on Display (Simon & Schuster, 2024). He is the founding editor of the literary journal CHEAP POP. His comics and writing have appeared in print and online at NPR, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, New South, and Passages North, among others. A native of Michigan, Robert lives and works in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can find him at robertjamesrussell.com, or on Twitter/Instagram at @robhollywood.