Craig Thompson, the Eisner and Harvey Award-winning cartoonist behind “Blankets” and “Habibi,” begins his first bi-monthly series “Ginseng Roots” in July 2019.
An announcement on ICv2 characterizes the autobiographical comic as a memoir/essay hybrid that explores Thompson’s rural upbringing in Marathon, Wisconsin, working ginseng fields with his brother. The announcement of “Ginseng Roots” is significant as it is his first ever serialized work. Thompson is primarily known as a graphic novelist, having won the Best New Talent Harvey Award for 1999’s “Goodbye Chunky Rice,” and earning accolades including three Harveys and two Eisner Awards for “Blankets” in 2004.
Minneapolis, Minnesota-based, boutique publisher Uncivilized Books will unveil “Ginseng Roots” to accompany Gabrielle Bell’s “My Dog Ivy” premiering in March 2019. The two comics will launch their new periodical line. The first issue will cost $5, and preorder information will be available in January. Here’s the blurb for the book:
From ages 10 to 20, Craig Thompson (the author of Blankets) and his little brother Phil, toiled in Wisconsin farms. Weeding and harvesting ginseng—an exotic medicinal herb that fetched huge profits in China—funded Craig’s youthful obsession with comic books. Comics in turn, allowed him to escape his rural, working class trappings.
Now, for the first time in his career, Thompson is working in serial form, in a bimonthly comic book series. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay—all comic book—Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300 year long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers.
Craig Thompson is a cartoonist and the author of the award-winning books Blankets; Good-bye, Chunky Rice; and Habibi. He was born in Michigan in 1975, and grew up in a rural farming community in central Wisconsin. His graphic novel Blankets won numerous industry awards and has been published in nearly twenty languages. Thompson lives in Portland, Oregon.
