Raina Telgemeier

Raina Telgemeier is an American cartoonist whose memoirs, fiction, and adaptations have helped establish a broad readership for middle-grade comics. Her direct, dialogue-driven storytelling focuses on how physical vulnerability, embarrassment, friendship, and family life shape adolescence. In the autobiographical Smile and Guts, dental trauma and persistent stomach problems are inseparable from social pressure and changing relationships. Her fiction carries that attention into other settings, including the school theater community of Drama and the family story at the center of Ghosts. Telgemeier developed her practice through the discipline of publishing a weekly webcomic, a schedule that helped her shape Smile. Her four adaptations of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club stories provided the financial support that allowed her to leave her full-time job and concentrate on her art.