Join us for a comics reading and performance by cartoonists writing about Palestine, including contributors to the collection Cartoonists for Palestine, MC’d by Solomon Brager and Shay Mirk. We will have readings from Jennifer Camper, Marguerite Dabaie, Eli Valley, Kazimir Lee, and Ben Passmore, and a live drawing to musical performance by Tracy Chahwan accompanied by Nebila Oguz and Omar Dewachi.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

Cartoonists will be selling merch at the event to fundraise for the Gaza Scholarship Fund for Displaced Students. Co-sponsored by Jewish Currents magazine and Cartoonists for Palestine.

Tracy Chahwan is an illustrator and designer from Lebanon. She started her career in Beirut, producing street art and posters for local independent music venues like the Beirut Groove Collective, and working with the Samandal and zeez comics collective to publish experimental comics and anthologies.

Nebila Oguz is a Turkish-American animator and cartoonist currently based in Philadelphia. She started illustrating by making political posters during the 2013 Gezi Park protests while living in Ankara, Turkey. Her work has appeared in comic anthologies as well as in her  zine I Didn’t Ask to be Here, where she breaks apart the absurdities of living and working in the United States. She is currently working as a Teaching Artist with Spiral Q.

Omar Dewachi is an Iraqi Canadian academic and sound artist based in New York City. Skilled in classical Iraqi and Arabic music, he performs across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Since 2018, he has been involved in sound design and music composition for theater, and has produced experimental and electronic music projects under the alias “Puppets of Babylon.” He teaches anthropology at Rutgers University.

Jennifer Camper is the author of books including Rude Girls and Dangerous Women and subGURLZ, and editor of two Juicy Mother comics anthologies. She was the creating director of three Queers & Comics Conferences and has been featured in the documentary film No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and exhibitions.

Marguerite Dabaie is the author of the graphic novel The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories. Their most recent comic, Legends in the Heights, draws on autobiographical, socio-political, and historical-fictional comics with a decorative flair.

Kazimir Lee has lived for almost equal amounts of time in Malaysia, the UK, and the US. They now reside in Brooklyn. They enjoy queer subtext, parenthood, ghost stories, and karaoke.

Ben Passmore is the author of the ongoing comic book series Daygloayhole, as well as the Eisner Award-nominated and Ignatz Award-winning comic collection Your Black Friend. He also wrote and illustrated Sports Is Hell, collaborated with Ezra Claytan Daniels on BTTM FDRS, and now contributes to publications such as The Nib and The New York Times. He lives in Philadelphia.

Eli Valley is a Jewish Currents contributing writer. His comics collection Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel is available from OR Books.

Hosts:

Sarah “Shay” Mirk is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, the author of Guantanamo Voices, and an editor of Cartoonists for Palestine.

Solomon Brager is the author of the graphic memoir Heavyweight (William Morrow, 2024) and the director of community engagement at Jewish Currents.