We are delighted to announce Sarah Mirk as the Oregon Cartoon Project’s Artist-in-Residence 2022. Sarah will work on projects from June to September 2022.
Comics Curriculum
To empower teachers who want to incorporate critical reading of comics into their classrooms, Sarah will collaborate with several cartoonists and teachers to create a comics curriculum appropriate for grades six through 12. This flexible curriculum will include comics pages that students will read and analyze, comics-reading discussion questions, hands-on activity worksheets that will get students started on making their own comics, and exercises that build the skills of reading, writing, and drawing comics. This downloadable curriculum will be available for free on the Oregon Cartoon Project website. While created for Oregon educators, anyone will be welcome to download and print out the curriculum for use in their classroom, workshop, or home.
Comics in the Parks
During the summer, Sarah and various collaborators will stage a series of community comics events in Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis parks. These family-friendly outdoor events will consist of artist talks on their work, collaborative comics drawing, and zine-making. The goal of these meet-ups is to build community among artists and create a network of comics creators, readers, and fans in the state.
About Sarah Mirk
Sarah Mirk is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. She is the author of several books, including the comics anthology Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison (Abrams, 2020). She is also a zine-maker and illustrator whose comics have been featured in The Nib, The New Yorker, Bitch, and NPR. A former reporter for The Portland Mercury and The Stranger, Sarah is now a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, where she writes and edits nonfiction comics, and a digital producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting. She teaches comics classes at Portland Community College and a writing class in Portland State University’s MFA program in Art and Social Practice, where she teaches a graduate seminar on writing and research. She identifies as white, cisgender, and queer. In her free time, she befriends strangers’ dogs.