Like a lot of American women, Aubrey Hirsch grew up trying to channel her own rage into other emotions. Maybe she wasn't mad, she was really jealous. Maybe she wasn't pissed off, she was actually sad. Eventually, Aubrey realized she had been suppressing something vital. Sometimes being angry is the main thing she should be. Instead of always running from her outrage, now she channels it into informative, funny, sometimes furious feminist comics. Aubrey joins us to talk about how she uses illustration to call out sexism, why rage can be a powerful force for collective change, and how we can channel it individually right now to change some things for the better. Her new book is called Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America. Full transcript available at relationscapes.org. About the Guest Aubrey Hirsch is author of Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America. She is a writer and illustrator living in New York. Her stories, essays, and comics have appeared in The New York Times, Vox, TIME Magazine, American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, The Nib and elsewhere. She is author of a short story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, and a flash fiction chapbook, This Will Be His Legacy. She has taught writing at Oberlin College, The University of Pittsburgh, Colorado College, Georgia College and State University, and Chatham University. She is recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Literature, an individual artist award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Daehler Fellowship in Creative Writing from The Colorado College, and The Meek Award for Graphic Nonfiction from The Florida Review. Subscribe to her (free!) Substack and follow her on Instagram @aubreyhirsch.
