WITS Writer Profile: John Isaacson

Students used to hide comic books in class. Now they study them. Graphic novels such as Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie are required reading in many high schools. Teachers are eager to learn more about specific techniques so that they can teach these books effectively.

John Isaacson began teaching comic arts at Cleveland High School for Writers in the Schools last year. John “discovered comics the way most kids do, and had some friends when I was ten years old, who would fold and staple little booklets and draw in them, making their own comics. Around the same time, a poet came to our classroom and taught us how to write poetry. It made sense to me that I should illustrate my poems.”

John read, wrote, and drew through high school. After college, he continued to study poetry and became more involved with zines and self-publishing. He also spent a year abroad in Ireland studying Irish literature and re-reading Joyce’s Ulysses.

When he returned to the states, John began a Master’s program and trained with California Poets in the Schools, the artist-in-residency program that originally brought a poet to his classroom. “I began a job teaching an after-school cartooning class to a bunch of ten-year-olds (mostly boys). I was taking a required Sociolinguistics class towards my Master’s degree. Thanks to this course, I realized that my student’s comics were full of ‘literacy events’ or writing. In other words, even though this was an art class, and students were spontaneously writing, filling dialogue balloons, adding sound effects, and narration.”

This spring John will teach a WITS residency at Lincoln High School, incorporating self-publishing through a partnership with the Independent Publishing Resource Center. His book Do It Yourself Screen-Printing and zine Pyromania #5 are on sale at Powell’s Books and Reading Frenzy.

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