SARAH MIRK /// The Feminist Comic Strip: From Guantanamo to your Relationship

Published

Sarah Mirk and I had this conversation in the offices of Bitch Magazine where she works as online editor. After introducing the magazine, for which she regularly uses the medium of comic to describe social/historical/cultural aspects of the feminist struggle, we address her personal work that also engages such medium. In The Secret Life of Gitmo Women, she and Lucy Bellwood created a comic book that recounts the life of two female veteran from the US Navy when they were assigned in Guantanamo Bay. We also talk about prisons and her experience of teaching playwright there, as well as the interesting inmate personalities that the TV show Orange Is the New Black succeeded to create. We conclude with her forthcoming book Sex From Scratch that attempts to liberate relationships from presupposed rules only to construct new ethical ones day after day.

Sarah Mirk is a Portland-based journalist who is interested in gender, politics, and history. She works as the online editor for national feminism and pop culture magazine Bitch and is also the author of a forthcoming book about dating, Sex from Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules (August 2014). She also writes, edits, and draws nonfiction comics, including the popular series Oregon History Comics.

WEBSITES:

– http://mirkwork.wordpress.com/
– http://bitchmagazine.org/
– http://bitchmagazine.org/blogs/comics

REFERENCE BOOKS:

– Sarah Mirk, Oregon History Comics, Know Your City.
– Sarah Mirk and Lucy Bellwood, The Secret Life of Gitmo Women (comic book), on narrative.ly (February 2014).
– Sarah Mirk, Sex From Scratch: Making Your Own Relationship Rules, Microcosm Publishing, forthcoming August 2014.