The "graphic memoir" really came into its own this decade, with many of the books by female authors.
Lucy Knisley and
MariNaomi each published a number of full-length autobiographical comics in the 2010s. The market expanded into
middle grade as well, witnessed by such well-received examples as
Raina Telgemeier's books, the
March series, and
Cece Bell's
El Deafo. • 2010: •
Smile, by
Raina Telgemeier, gives an account of the author's life from sixth grade to high school. The book won the 2010
Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. In 2011, the book won the
Eisner Award for
Best Publication for Teens. It was also one of
Young Adult Library Services Association's 2011 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and a 2011
Association for Library Service to Children Notable Children's Book for Middle Readers. In 2013, it won the Intermediate
Young Reader's Choice Award from Washington and the 2013
Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award from Illinois. It won the 2014 Nevada Young Reader Award.
Smile was followed by
Sisters (2014), which won Telgemeier an
Eisner Award for best Writer/Artist, 2015. •
Drinking at the Movies, by
Julia Wertz. Against the backdrop of her move from San Francisco to New York, the book details serious issues, such as a family member's battle with substance abuse and her own alcoholism, with trademark wit and self-effacement.
Drinking at the Movies was nominated for a 2011
Eisner Award in the Best Humor Publication category. •
Sarah Glidden wrote and illustrated
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, a full-length exploration of Glidden's 2007 visit to
Israel as part of a
Birthright Israel tour. The book has subsequently been translated into five languages. •
Vanessa Davis'
Make Me a Woman featured stories taken from her diary and are candidly personal, witty and self-deprecating; centering on her youth, mother, relationships with men, and
Jewish identity. •
Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence is a graphic memoir by
Geoffrey Canada, adapted and illustrated by
Jamar Nicholas. •
Joyce Farmer's
Special Exits documents in comics form the sad and sometimes humorous episodes of her parents' final years.
Special Exits won the
National Cartoonists Society's Graphic Novel Award in 2011. •
Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale is an autobiographical comic book by
Belle Yang. It is a memoir about her relatives' experiences in China in the mid-20th century. • 2011: •
Nicola Streeten's graphic memoir
Billy, Me & You is the first long-form graphic memoir by a British woman to have been published. Dealing with the intersection of comics and medicine, it is cited as an example of
graphic medicine. •
MariNaomi's
Kiss and Tell was published in 2011, followed by ''Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories
in 2014, and I Thought YOU Hated ME'' in 2016. •
Chester Brown's
Paying for It, a combination of
memoir and
polemic, explores Brown's decision to give up on romantic love and to take up the life of a "
john" by frequenting
prostitutes. The book, published by
Drawn & Quarterly, was controversial, and a
bestseller. •
GB Tran's
Vietnamerica depicts the struggles encountered by Tran's grandparents in
French Indochina and his parents during the
Vietnam War and in their immigration to the United States.
Vietnamerica won a
Society of Illustrators Gold Medal and was included in
Time's list of Top 10 Graphic Memoirs. •
Adrian Tomine's
Scenes From an Impending Marriage, a light-hearted recap of Tomine's wedding and the lead-up to it. • 2012: •
Alison Bechdel published
Are You My Mother?, a graphic memoir that examines Bechdel's relationship with her mother through the lens of
psychoanalysis. •
My Friend Dahmer, by
John "Derf" Backderf, is about his teenage friendship with
Jeffrey Dahmer, who later became a
serial killer. The book was nominated for an
Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel. It also was nominated for a
Harvey Award and a
Reuben Award and received the Revelation Award at the 2014
Angoulême International Comics Festival. •
Ellen Forney's
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me addressed her experiences with
bipolar disorder. It was a New York Times Bestseller.
Marbles featured prominently in a
graphic medicine exhibit that Forney curated for the
United States National Library of Medicine. •
The Voyeurs is a real-time memoir of a turbulent five years in the life of renowned cartoonist, diarist, and filmmaker
Gabrielle Bell. It collects episodes from her award-winning series,
Lucky, in which she travels to Tokyo, Paris, and the South of France and all over the United States, but remains anchored by her beloved Brooklyn, where sidekick Tony provides ongoing insight, offbeat humor and enduring friendship. •
Zeina Abirached's graphic memoir,
A Game for Swallows: To Die, To Leave, To Return was published by the Graphic Universe division of Lerner Publishing Group. A second memoir,
I Remember Beirut, was published in 2014. •
Little White Duck: A Childhood in China, written by Na Liu and illustrated by her husband, Andrés Vera Martínez, discusses Na Liu's childhood in China during the 1970s and 1980s. •
A Chinese Life is a French graphic novel co-written by
Li Kunwu and
Philippe Ôtié and illustrated by Li Kunwu. The book describes Li Kunwu's life during the
Cultural Revolution. •
Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is an autobiographical comic set during the
civil rights movement written by American author Lila Quintero Weaver. The author was nominated for the 2012
Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent for this work. • 2013: • Congressman and civil rights leader
John Lewis released
March: Book One, the first volume of an autobiographical graphic novel trilogy, co-written by
Andrew Aydin and drawn by
Nate Powell.
March: Book Two was published in 2015 and
March: Book Three appeared in 2016. •
Ulli Lust's
Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life (2013; originally published in German in 2009) won an
Ignatz Award for best graphic novel, the LA Times Book Award for Graphic Novels and then was nominated for an
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. •
Nicole Georges' graphic memoir,
Calling Dr. Laura. The book depicts the events following the author's visit to a
palm reader at age twenty-three, where she is told by the psychic there that her father is not actually dead like her family claimed years ago. In light of this news, the author is "sent into a tailspin about her identity," and endeavors to find out the truth, recounting the occurrences of her childhood and grappling with feelings of uncertainty. • 2014: • ''
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?'' by cartoonist
Roz Chast. The book is about Chast's parents in their final years. In 2014, the book won the
National Book Critics Circle Award in the Autobiography/Memoir section. The book also won the inaugural Kirkus Prize in non-fiction category presented by
Kirkus Reviews. The book was a finalist for the
Thurber Prize for American Humor. The book was selected as one of
The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2014. •
El Deafo, written and illustrated by
Cece Bell, is a loose autobiographical account of Bell's childhood and life with her deafness. The characters in the book are all anthropomorphic bunnies. •
Mimi Pond's
Over Easy (2014), a coming-of-age story about a young Margaret Pond as she works at Imperial Café, a diner full of hippies and punks in the late 1970s. It is in this diner that Margaret makes the transition into 'Madge' and gets a glimpse at adulthood, which includes addiction, confusion, awkward moments, the artist dream, and sexual awakenings.
Over Easy encapsulates 1970s Oakland in a witty, slightly fictionalized, memoir of Pond's experiences. The memoir won the
PEN Center USA award for Graphic Literature Outstanding Body of Work, with a special mention; Pond also won an
Inkpot Award after the release of
Over Easy. •
Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir, by
Liz Prince, explores what it means to be female and describes Prince's struggle with
gender issues. This memoir is told through short, related stories starting from Prince's early childhood experiences and ending when Prince is a teenager and has slowly learned to define herself as a woman on her own terms. •
An Iranian Metamorphosis is
Mana Neyestani's autobiographical graphic novel about life in post-revolutionary Iran. Originally published in French, it was later published in German, Spanish and English. •
The Hospital Suite by
John Porcellino details his struggles with illness in the 1990s and early 2000s. •
Lucy Knisley's
An Age of License is a travel memoir recounting the author's trip to Europe/Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. Knisley's
Displacement: A Travelogue (2015) was nominated for the 2016
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. •
Meags Fitzgerald published
Photobooth: A Biography, a non-fiction graphic novel detailing her interest in chemical photo booths; it won the 2015
Doug Wright Spotlight Award. She followed it in 2015 with the autobiographical graphic novel
Long Red Hair. • 2015: •
The Arab of the Future is French-Syrian cartoonist
Riad Sattouf's account of his childhood growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The book was nominated for the 2016
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.
The Arab of the Future 2 appeared in 2016. •
Dare to Disappoint is
Özge Samancı's graphic coming-of-age memoir. Her story takes place after the third military coup leading to Turkey's rapid change to neo-capitalism from 1980 to 2000. The book was translated into five languages. •
Becoming Unbecoming, by English author
Una, depicts the effects of misogyny and sexism on twelve-year old Una growing up in northern England in 1977 while the
Yorkshire Ripper is on the loose, creating a panic among townspeople. •
Honor Girl is a graphic memoir written and illustrated by
Maggie Thrash. It is the story of Thrash's first crush at an all-girls summer camp in Kentucky in 2000. •
Bill Griffith's memoir,
Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair With a Famous Cartoonist. (For over a decade, starting in 1957, Griffith's mother Barbara had an affair with cartoonist
Lawrence Lariar; this formed the basis of
Invisible Ink.) • 2016: •
Tom Hart's
Rosalie Lightning, a memoir named after his daughter, who had died suddenly when she was almost two, and about his and his wife's grief and their attempts to make sense of their life afterwards. The book was nominated for the 2017
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. •
Rokudenashiko's
What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy is a graphic memoir of a Japanese artist who has been jailed twice for so-called acts of obscenity and the distribution of pornographic materials yet continues to champion the depiction of the vagina. • 2017: •
Thi Bui's graphic memoir
The Best We Could Do chronicles the life of her refugee parents and siblings, their life in Vietnam prior to their escape after the
Vietnam War, and their eventual migration to the United States, delving into themes of immigration, war and intergenerational trauma. The book received a number of accolades, including the
National Book Critics Circle Award, the
American Book Award, and was also a finalist for the
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. • Micah R Maher's
Basically My Day is an autobiographical anthropomorphic comic about their life as a queer-transgender diabetic artist started in 2017. • 2018: • In
Fab4 Mania,
Carol Tyler referenced her personal writings from 1965 for a first-hand account of seeing
the Beatles in person in
Chicago at age 13. • 2019: • Actor and activist
George Takei published
They Called Us Enemy, an autobiographical graphic novel co-written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by
Harmony Becker. ==2020s==