Teaching the Classes I Wanted to Take

Last week while I was on a short trip to Toronto, I visited a great magazine shop called Issues. While there, I experienced the thrill of seeing my published comic in the “Food is Place” issue of Serviette, Canada’s award-winning food magazine.

Being at Issues was a moment to reflect on how far I’ve come from making my first comics in 2018, during my Food Studies Master’s program at University of the Pacific. I’d discovered comics as a way to explain the food concepts and theory I was learning—and then promptly found out the program would be shut down for budget reasons.

Scrambling to finish my degree with limited resources, I reached out to the MFA in Comics program at California College of the Arts (CCA). They couldn’t let me take a formal class, but the program chair, Matt Silady, helped me create an independent study blending his expertise in comics and my passion for food—which changed everything. He mentored me through my endless questions about making comics, then later about pitching books, and pay rates for published work.

In the seven years since, I’ve learned the rest on my own—and I’m proud to have published comics in The Washington Post and The New York Times, worked with indie publications like Serviette, and eventually come full circle to teach in CCA’s MFA & BFA in Comics programs.

My moment in Issues felt especially poignant, because this month I have been working to co-create a workshop and prepare a class that I would have killed to take when I had first started out in comics:

• “How to Publish Your Comics” a virtual workshop I’m co-teaching with graphic novelist K. Woodman-Maynard on Oct. 7

• “Food & Comics” a 6-week course that I designed for CCA’s continuing education program on Tuesdays, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm PT, starting on Nov. 4

If you’re interested in either of those topics, I’d love to share what I’ve learned so far with you!

And now, I want to include the comic that kicked off this whole post: my piece for Serviette called “Stone Soup and Sorry Pizza.” This is the first time I’m sharing it publicly since it was published in November 2024.

Publishing Workshop TOMORROW at 4:30 pm PT! Join K. Woodman-Maynard (Macmillan, Candlewick Press) and me (The New York Times, Washington Post) for a 90-minute virtual workshop discussing how to break into traditional graphic novel and editorial publishing. Together we’ll cover agents, advances, pitching, and strategies for navigating the publishing process with more clarity and confidence. This workshop will be recorded if you can’t make it live.

Sign up here

Food & Comics starts on Tuesday, Nov. 4 | This 6-week course will explore food-focused graphic storytelling through memoir, non-fiction, fiction, and illustrated recipes—with a fun emphasis on seasonal food traditions! Students will learn about these storytelling approaches through lectures, readings of comics, and hands-on mini-projects. And, at the end of the course, students will receive a memento of their work: a compiled PDF zine of everyone’s illustrated holiday recipes.

Sign up here