Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe. This item is unavailable.Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe

Ali Fitzgerald, an American cartoonist living and working in Berlin, began teaching comics-making to refugees in an emergency shelter. People who are fleeing their homes, now warzones, arrive at a shelter and draw images of tragic violence and careful optimism. Now in a stunning graphic memoir, compassionate and unflinchingly intimate, Fitzgerald recounts her incredible experience, of the highs of the creatively hopeful, along with the deep depression of the disllusioned, entwining her story with complex themes of political and personal displacement.

Ali Fitzgerald is a comic columnist for The New Yorker, where she also contributes writing and visual essays. Her popular webcomic series, Hungover Bear and Friends, was published by McSweeney's and she has contributed regular comics to The New York Times and New York Magazine. Her graphic nonfiction book, Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe (Fantagraphics, 2018) was named one of the best comics of 2018 by Vulture and won the Independent Publisher's award for best graphic book of 2019. Fitzgerald's artwork has been exhibited internationally and she has shown in institutions like the Haus am Luetzowplatz, The Austin Museum of Art, the Center for Book Arts, and SP2 Gallery. She often works with museums and urban spaces on comics and public art projects. In late 2021, she created a series of murals for the Berlin Subway and in 2023, she was nominated for the Cartoonist Studio Prize for "Iconic," a comic commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art. Born in Oakland, CA, she graduated with an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and lives in Paris.