Chris Schweizer
Chris Schweizer was born in 1980 and grew up in Louisiana and Kentucky. He received a BFA in Graphic Design from Murray State University, where he also studied English, and his MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. He is the cartoonist of the Crogan Adventure Series, an award-winning historical fiction graphic novel series that has made the American Library Association’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, the Maverick list, and Book Reporter’s Core Ten Teen Collection Graphic Novels list, as well as earning Eisner and CYBILS award nominations. Tricky Journeys is his first series for young readers. He teaches comics at SCAD-Atlanta, and lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.
Interview
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
I had a beautifully rendered hardcover comic adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes by Burne Hogarth. I read that thing to pieces.
Who are your top three favorite authors or illustrators?
My favorite author is George MacDonald Fraser, a historian, screenwriter, film theorist, and novelist with whose work I became familiar in college. I write a lot of historical fiction, and his essays on historical narrative really put me on my current course. I also really love the Norweigian cartoonist Jason, who does comics that would probably be considered Magic Realism, and the short stories of Garrison Keillor.
Why did you want to become an author or illustrator?
I love telling stories! I also love to draw. Cartooning gives me the chance to do both.
Do you have any advice for future authors or illustrators?
Start small! Everyone wants to do some thousand-page epic, but you learn by doing smaller stories first. If you can master a good eight-page story, you’ll be able to master longer ones, too.