Faculty
Shay Mirk
Sarah “Shay” Mirk (she/they) is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. She is the author of Guantanamo Voices (Abrams, 2020), an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay prison, which Kirkus called “extraordinary… an eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America’s worst trespasses.” She is also a zine-maker and illustrator whose comics have been featured in The Nib, The New Yorker, Bitch, and NPR. Her book on the craft of making nonfiction comics, Drawn from the Margins: The Power of Graphic Journalism (co-written with Eleri Harris), will debut from Abrams ComicsArts in 2024.
She is the author several books, including You Do You: Figuring Out Your Body, Dating, and Sexuality (Lerner, 2019), Sex from Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules (Microcosm, 2014), the graphic novel Open Earth (Limerence Press, 2018), and the self-published collection Year of Zines (2020).
Mirk is an adjunct professor in Portland State University’s MFA program in Art and Social Practice, where she teaches a graduate seminar on writing and research.
Mirk holds a degree in history, with honors, from Grinnell College. She identifies as white, nonbinary, and queer. In her free time, she befriends strangers’ dogs.