In person at Brookline Booksmith! Celebrate the release of Invisible Wounds with author Jess Ruliffson, in conversation with Heather Hopp-Bruce–RSVP here (link)!
About the book: Candid, compassionate graphic interviews with returning war vets from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Cartoonist Jess Ruliffson spent five years traveling across the country interviewing veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, from kitchen tables in Georgia and libraries in New York City to dive bars in Mississippi and back porches in Vermont. What she finds is that the real experience of soldiers at war is a far cry from depictions in popular media like Zero Dark Thirty or American Sniper. In these illustrated interviews, Ruliffson shares the stories of men, women, and non-binary ex-soldiers who struggle to reconcile their wartime experiences with their postwar lives. Identity lies at the heart of these stories, as they grapple with their gender, their race, and the brutality they’ve witnessed and caused. In this compassionate, probing book, Ruliffson reveals how America’s endless entanglement in wars have affected the psyches of the people who wage them.
About Jess Ruliffson:Jess Ruliffson’s comics have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, BuzzFeed, The Nib, The Boston Globe, Pantheon Books, Wilson Quarterly, and The Oxford American. She teaches at The Sequential Artists Workshop and Lesley University.
About Heather Hopp-Bruce: Heather Hopp-Bruce manages the visual life of opinion content and identity for the Boston Globe. She holds a Certificate from the Harvard School of Professional Development in Digital Marketing Strategy, has been a Society for News Design judge, guest art director at the Savannah College of Art and design, and is a guest lecturer at Lesley College of Art and Design.
