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Media Kit

    biography

    SUPER-SHORT VERSION

    Jessica Abel is a cartoonist, author, and business coach for creatives who helps accomplished creative professionals build expertise-based businesses that generate reliable income without consuming their creative life.

    SOMEWHAT-SHORT VERSION

    Jessica Abel is a cartoonist, author, and business coach for creatives. As founder of Autonomous Creative, she works with accomplished creative professionals whose careers are hard to categorize and whose businesses haven't caught up with their expertise. Drawing on 30+ years as a working artist and more than a decade running her own business, she helps clients build businesses custom-built around their values, their work, and the real demands of a creative life.

    LONG VERSION

    Jessica Abel is a cartoonist, author, and business coach for creatives, and the founder of Autonomous Creative.

    She works with accomplished creative professionals whose careers are hard to categorize and whose businesses haven't caught up with their expertise. Drawing on 30+ years as a working artist and more than a decade running her own business, she helps clients build businesses custom-built around their values, their work, and the real demands of a creative life.

    Her books include Out on the Wire, the Harvey Award-winning graphic novel La Perdida, and Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life, her guide to creative productivity for working artists. She has taught comics, narrative, and professional practice at the university level for 25 years, including as founding chair of the Illustration Department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

    Once called "terrifying" by an intern, Abel has been trying for years to tone it down, but still claims Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson must have learned the eyebrow thing from her.

    She lives in Philadelphia.

    FOR ARTS & ACADEMIC CONTEXTS

    Jessica Abel is a Harvey Award-winning cartoonist, author, and business coach for creatives.

    Her graphic works include the novel La Perdida (Pantheon), the graphic nonfiction Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, and the Eisner-nominated Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars. With her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden, she co-authored Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics, the definitive textbooks on comics creation, and served as series editor for The Best American Comics from 2007 to 2013. She has produced two podcasts: Out on the Wire, a companion to her book on radio storytelling, and The Autonomous Creative, an interview show exploring how working creative professionals actually built their careers.

    She taught comics, narrative, and professional practice at the university level for 25 years, most recently as founding chair of the Illustration Department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. From 2012 to 2016, she held a residency at la Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême, France, awarded by la Cité de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image. Since 1992, Abel has published with indie and commercial houses, magazines, and as a self-publisher.

    She is the founder of Autonomous Creative, where she coaches accomplished creative professionals to build expertise-based businesses that generate reliable income and protect time for the work that defines them. She lives in Philadelphia.

    BY THE NUMBERS

    AWARDS & RECOGNITION
    • 2002 Harvey Award, Best New Series (La Perdida)
    • 1997 Harvey Award, Best New Artist
    • 1997 Friends of Lulu Award, Best New Artist
    • 1995 Xeric Foundation Grant
    • 2017 Eisner Award nominations, Best Writer/Artist and Best Publication for Teens (Trish Trash)
    • 2013 Eisner Award nomination, Best Comics-Related Book (Mastering Comics)
    • 2009 Eisner Award nomination, Best Comics-Related Book (Drawing Words & Writing Pictures)
    • 2012–2016 La Maison des Auteurs residency, Angoulême, France (awarded by la Cité de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image)
    • Reviewed and cited in The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, Time, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks
    RESIDENCIES
    • 2024 Rankin Scholar-in-Residence, Drexel University
    • 2019 Faculty Residency, the Studios at MASS MoCA
    • 2019 York College Writer-in-Residence
    • 2016 Master Artist, Atlantic Center for the Arts
    • 2013 Tri-College Creative Residency, Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges
    • 2010 Walter Gropius Master Artist Series, Huntington Museum of Art
    TEACHING
    • Founding chair, Illustration Department, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2016–2024
    • School of Visual Arts, New York, 2001–2012
    • California College of Arts, Low-Residency MFA in Comics, 2014–2016
    • École européenne supérieure de l'image, Master BD program, 2012
    • The Animation Workshop, Viborg, Denmark, 2016
    • Additional: The New School, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ox-Bow, Split Rock, CSU Summer Arts
    SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
    • Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars — The Collected Edition (Super Genius/NBM, 2018)
    • Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life (Autonomous Creative, 2017)
    • Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio (Crown/Random House, 2015)
    • Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued (First Second, 2012) — with Matt Madden
    • Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (First Second, 2008) — with Matt Madden
    • Life Sucks (First Second, 2008) — with Gabriel Soria, art by Warren Pleece
    • La Perdida (Pantheon, 2006)
    • Radio: An Illustrated Guide (WBEZ Chicago, 1999) — with Ira Glass
    • The Best American Comics (Houghton Mifflin, 2007–2013) — series editor with Matt Madden
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    HEADSHOTS

    Jessica Abel with her books, photo by Maria Teicher
    Jessica Abel by Maria Teicher

    All headshots by Maria Teicher

    download full head shot pack
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    PODCASTS & INTERVIEWS

    Brand Your Passion with Hollie Arnett

    Standing out, staying punk, and being bold about sharing your work

    The Grown-Ass Woman's Guide with Jackie MacDougall

    Can I Really Make a Living as a Creative?

    #AmWriting with KJ Dell'Antonia

    #YouCanDoIt (even now)

    Entrepreneurship Elevated with Mike Michalowicz

    Art as a Business

    What Works with Tara McMullin

    Carving Out Space For Creative Work

    DIY MFA Radio with Gabriela Pereira

    Find Your Creative Focus

    CopyBlogger with Sonia Simone

    Getting Your Big, Scary Projects Finished

    The Broad Experience with Ashley Milne-Tyte

    Focus Amidst the Chaos

    Productive Flourshing with Charlie Gilkey

    What Productivity & Creativity Teachers Do When They Get Stuck

    Help Yourself with Tara McMullin

    The Secret Of Finding Your Focus

    The Abundant Artist with Cory Huff

    Idea Debt with Jessica Abel

    The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn

    How To Find Creative Focus With Jessica Abel

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    SOCIAL PROFILES

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