Illustrator as Witness: Nora Krug and Steven Heller in Conversation

Nora Krug will be joined by Steven Heller to discuss her politically-motivated visual non-fiction work including On Tyranny and Belonging. They will also talk about the kind of work that has influenced Nora’s career as an artist and author. There will be time at the end for a Q+A. 

This program is being offered in conjunction with, Illustrator as Witness: A selection of Author and Illustrator Nora Krug’s politically motivated visual nonfiction work, currently on view at the Society of Illustrators until September 4. Plan your visit.

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.

Steven Heller is the co-chair of SVA MFA Design / Designer as Entrepreneur program. He is the author, editor or co-author of over 200 books, including the current Hell: Its Places and People, with Seymour Chwast and the forthcoming GROWING UP UNDERGROUND: A MEMOIR OF COUNTCULTURE NEW YORK (out in October 2022). He writes the Daily Heller for PRINTmag.com, where he editor-at-large and shares ownership with five partners.