Jonathan Hill is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and educator living in Portland, OR. He graduated in 2003 as valedictorian of the Savannah College of Art & Design with a degree in Sequential Art. Some of his clients include Microsoft, the Portland Trailblazers, the Viet Nam Literature Project, the Inlander, Fantagraphics Books, Dark Horse Comics, Tor.com, The Believer Magazine, Literary Arts, and Powell’s City of Books. He’s been the staff illustrator to The Asian Reporter since 2007.
His books have been published by First Second, Oni Press, and is currently working on books for Walker Books US. His books have been featured at ABC New Voices, YALSA and JLG selections, and won awards – Americus won the 2012 Carla Cohen Free Speech Award and Odessa won the 2021 Believer Book Award for Graphic Literature.
He was an associate professor in the Illustration Department at the Pacific Northwest College of Art from 2014-2021, building the comics curriculum from the ground up, taught comics and illustration classes for youth programs at the Oregon College of Art and Craft from 2010-2018, and was Writer in Residence through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program from 2012-2016. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Literary Arts and chairs the Youth Programs Advisory Council.
Jonathan has also presented and taught workshops for the Washington School for the Deaf, the Oregon Association of School Librarians, The Portland Art Museum, Portland Public Schools, the Los Angeles Public Library, and was guest faculty at Tin House’s 2020 Summer Workshop, and The Believer’s Comics Workshops.
“This funny, entertaining graphic novel centers friendship and self-discovery as it skillfully balances comedy with serious topics like identity and belonging. Informed by his Vietnamese relatives’ immigrant experiences and his own childhood, Hill writes with thoughtful insight. . . . Engaging and thought-provoking.”
