I’m very pleased to find that my adaptation of Lies My Teacher Told Me has won the 2025 Midland Authors Award for young people’s nonfiction! It’s an honor to join the ranks of fellow Midwestern author recipients Kurt Vonnegut, Studs Terkel, Louise Erdrich, and many more.
'LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME' is out today!
Today’s the day!
Four years ago I was locked down in my house just like you, starting work on my adaptation of Lies My Teacher Told Me— utterly uncertain what kind of world the book would be released into. It’s out everywhere today, more relevant and crucial than ever before. My thoughts and gratitude are with the late, great James Loewen for trusting me with his work!
Get a copy from your local book/comics shop, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Amazon, or signed/sketched copies directly from me— and my other brand-new graphic novel Fall Through is still hot off the presses too!
Thanks, everybody.
'LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME' & 'FALL THROUGH' direct signed preorders up now.
Hi there! I now have both Lies My Teacher Told Me (out April 16th) and Fall Through (out February 6th) available for signed/sketched preorders directly from me here.
I’ll begin sending out Fall Through orders in early/mid January, as soon as my shipment arrives, and will send out copies of Lies in March once those books arrive.
Thanks for your patience— the wait is almost over, and yesterday I shipped out about ten early copies of Fall Through!
LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME-- cover reveal & preorders up now!
Announcing my full-length comics adaptation of James Loewen’s influential Lies My Teacher Told Me, out April 16th, 2024 from The New Press!
I like to describe this book as a history book about history textbooks: it both illuminates and corrects many misconceptions and outright falsehoods commonly accepted in American history, while outlining how these errors, myths, and lies have found themselves embedded in our historical understanding and education—and a path to fixing what our miseducation has broken, developing critical thinking skills, empathy, and room for contradiction along the way. Loewen’s book has sold over two million copies since its initial release in 1995.
“Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book.” –Howard Zinn
Preorder here from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powells.
(So there’s no confusion: I also recently announced my next fiction graphic novel, Fall Through, which is out February 6, 2024 from Abrams ComicArts— you can preorder that and get more info here.)
Lies My Teacher Told Me was an earthshaking reading experience for me in the early 2000s, and I had reread it several times when the late, great James Loewen contacted me in early 2020 about adapting his text into the comics medium. I said yes on the spot, and we worked out details and approach over the phone during his final year. Jim was a very kind, open person and it hurts knowing that we never got a chance to meet in person—and so it’s my deepest honor to bring his work across the finish line, hopefully doing justice to his ideas, knowledge, and humanity.
I also want to clarify that my role on this book is not merely as artist. This is a full comics adaptation for which I am the sole creator, comparing and synthesizing multiple editions of his book and updating and recontextualizing parts of the text to meet with both standards of knowledge and perspective after his 2017 edition was released, and after his passing in 2021. Mr. Loewen and I overwhelmingly see eye-to-eye in our worldviews, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we agree on everything, so in my role adapting his work I let him speak for himself and allow room for a more complex understanding of our joint perspectives on this history—which is the entire point of the book.
I look forward to new conversations and a deepened understanding of the world we share once this book hits shelves—please preorder and spread the word. Thank you for your support and faith, as always!
Uncomfortable truths & accurate history.
James Loewen penned the above words back in 1995 for the original edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me— and it’s truer than ever today, in the face of increasingly hostile and violent opposition. This book helped lay the foundation for so much of how we think about and discuss American history at the high school and college levels, and I’m so eager to release my forthcoming comics adaptation in spring 2024 from The New Press.
More info and an official announcement later in the year!
Another book finished-- and starting the next.
Last week I finished drawing my next original graphic novel, Fall Through— it’s a sweaty, interdimensional 1990’s underground punk soap opera (starring the band Diamond Mine from their appearance in my 2018 book Come Again) that’ll be out next August or so from Abrams ComicArts. More details and an official announcement in a few months!
Next up on the drawing table: my adaptation of the late, great James Loewen’s influential book Lies My Teacher Told Me, which will be released in 2024 by The New Press.
R.I.P. James Loewen
Yesterday I received the sad news that author, historian, and collaborator James Loewen had passed away after a long struggle with cancer. I’d gotten to know and work together with him over the past year and a half, and he was a positive, no-nonsense kind of person— and one who had a jarring head-on embrace of his mortality and life’s arc.
I’m still working on a graphic adaptation of his influential book Lies My Teacher Taught Me, trying my best to carry the torch and keep these extremely relevant ideas and conversations going at all levels across society. What he wrote about is at the very heart of our current, ongoing social and political crisis. Lies and Sundown Towns were very influential on me and most of my work since 2008.
I hope to do him justice— Rest In Peace, Jim.
