Graphic Memoirs... And Malaka Makes Three

As we get closer to the festival (how is it almost February?!? Eek) we’re going to be announcing our authors at an increased rate to make sure we have time to tell you about all the amazing writers and poets who will be coming to this year’s event. To that end, and following on from Monday’s announcement of Kristen Radtke, we’re going to finish the week by rounding out the Graphic Memoir panel with Malaka Gharib. Like Kristen, Malaka was scheduled to come in 2020, before You Know What, so we are especially happy to welcome her to Columbia in April. We know it will be worth the wait!

Malaka Gharib is an artist and a journalist based in Washington, D.C. She is the author of I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir, about being first-generation Filipino Egyptian American. She is a writer and editor on NPR's science desk, reporting on global health and development topics such as humanitarian aid and gender and income inequality.  

She also writes for NPR on her experience as the child of immigrants, from talking to her Filipino mom about mental health to hosting an Eid feast for her Muslim father. Her art -- including a comic on the history of pimiento cheese in the Philippines and eating Chinese food in Paris -- have been published in Catapult, The Nib, Saveur Magazine, NPR, The Washington City Paper, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New York Times Style Magazine. She is the founder of the D.C. Art Book Fair and The Runcible Spoon, a zine about food and fantasy. 

 She graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a dual major in magazine journalism and marketing.