I firmly believe that anyone can make compelling comics, even if they think they “can’t draw.” At the same time, I know from experience that drawing and writing comics is super hard, and there is always room to push yourself to get better. I get great satisfaction from watching beginning students fall in love with comics, set aside their fears about drawing, and compose funny, poignant, powerful works. I also love challenging more experienced cartoonists to push their writing and drawing skills further.
I’ve been teaching in the Creative Writing Department at UBC since 2012. I began with an undergraduate lecture class on comics, and have been teaching a small, graduate level workshop class in comics creation each term since 2013, both on-campus and online. As of fall 2016, I’m teaching full-time, both lectures and workshops. Exciting!
I’ve also led workshops and given presentations for conferences and for comics and literary festivals — including Thought Bubble (Leeds, UK), Talking About Jewish Women and Comics (New York), Comics and Medicine (Chicago), and Comics in the Multimodal World (Vancouver).
These are some comics from my UBC students, most of whom have never tried their hand at comics before.