Rawand Issa & Malaka Gharib: Graphic Memoir & Navigating Change
Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023
In collaboration with Maamoul Press, the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) presents a live streamed conversation between graphic novelists Malaka Gharib and Rawand Issa, centering on their recently published graphic memoirs: Gharib’s “It Won’t Always Be Like This” (Ten Speed Graphic, 2022) and Issa’s “Inside the Giant Fish” (Maamoul Press, 2022). Both authors delve into nostalgic summers on the beach, and themes of identity, adolescence and growing up amid environmental change and social expectations explored in these works.
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Rawand Issa is a comics artist and writer from Lebanon whose work focuses on socio-economic issues and documenting real stories. She is the author of the graphic memoir “Inside the Giant Fish”, the story of a girl looking for her lost memories on a beach that no longer exists, published in Arabic in 2019 and English in 2022. She has created several other short comic books and zines including “The Insubordinate” and “Not From Mars” in addition to contributing political cartoons and comics to various publications.
Malaka Gharib is a journalist, cartoonist and graphic novelist. She is the author of "I Was Their American Dream," a graphic memoir published in 2019 about being first-generation Filipino Egyptian American, which won an Arab American Book Award in 2020. Then in 2022, she published "It Won't Always Be Like This," a graphic memoir about her summers in the Middle East. By day, she works as a digital editor at NPR for Life Kit. Her comics and writing have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Catapult, The Believer Magazine and The New Yorker. She lives in Nashville, Tenn., with her husband, son and Shiba Inu.
This event is in partnership with the Arab American National Museum.
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