During her eight years living in Berlin, Fitzgerald spent a year and a half teaching the craft of illustration to asylum seekers from countries like Syria and Afghanistan – people who have often been targets of bigotry and hatred in both their native and adopted countries. Her powerful graphic memoir chronicles her experience with these extraordinary students, telling both their stories and her own. Fitzgerald, an artist who has exhibited extensively in Europe and the U.S., has had her comics regularly featured in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and McSweeney’s, and her book is a compassionate and intimate look at the empowering capacities of art, capturing the highs and lows of a decade in an ever-changing European metropolis.
Ali will be at Desert Island Comics in Brooklyn on November 1st from 7-9m to celebrate the release of her new book, Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe.
