Illustrator as Witness: A selection of Author and Illustrator Nora Krug’s politically motivated visual nonfiction work

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in publications internationally. Krug is a recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and others, and she was named Illustrator of the Year by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, about WWII and her own German family history, was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. It was the winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, the Society of Illustrators silver medal, and the British Book Design and Production Award, among others.

Her collaboration with historian Timothy Snyder, a graphic edition of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, was named a Best Graphic Novel of 2021 by the New York Times. Krug’s illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals by the Society of Illustrators and the NY Art Directors Club. Her visual biography, Kamikaze, about a surviving Japanese WWII pilot, was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics and Best Non-Required Reading, and her animations were shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Krug is Associate Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City.