Aubrey Hirsch

Aubrey Hirsch

Photo courtesy of Aubrey Hirsch

Bio

Aubrey Hirsch is a writer and illustrator living in New York. She is the author of Why We Never Talk About Sugar, a short story collection, and This Will Be His Legacy, a flash fiction chapbook. She is the recipient of the Daehler Fellowship from the Colorado College and the Meek Award for Graphic Narrative from the Florida Review. Her comics, essays, and stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, the New York Times, American Short Fiction, TIME, the Nib, the Rumpus, the Florida Review, and elsewhere.

I started making graphic narratives five years ago as a way of exploring a new creative outlet for my work about gender, science, and parenting. I quickly fell in love with the process of making comics, which allowed me to easily transition in and out of work periods without having to write my way back into a draft.

This proved to be invaluable when the pandemic hit and I was suddenly supervising distance-learning for my two young children. The only opportunities I had to write came during their brief on-camera class meetings, and even then I was often interrupted to assemble snacks or troubleshoot technical issues. I’m incredibly proud of the work I was able to produce in those short periods in that tremendously challenging time, but as the weeks of school closures turned into months, and then a year, I began to feel like an imposter in my life as a writer and artist.

This award from the National Endowment for the Arts is a reminder that what I do in that life matters, and that there are people waiting for my words and my art. This is truly a vital injection of both resources and confidence after a year that has brutalized so many artists, particularly women. I am unspeakably grateful for the support.