Greetings! I’m cooklin, but you can call me CC. I am an award-winning cartoonist and graphic journalist based in Vancouver, Washington.
I grew up in a college town called New Concord, Ohio surrounded by cows and Christian fundamentalists. In elementary school, I had a stutter that my speech therapist eventually attributed to me being so eager to tell stories that my mouth couldn’t keep up with my brain. The stutter is long gone, but the drive to tell stories is an eternal flame.
When I was 18, that flame carried me to UNC School of the Arts, where I attended film school, did some shenanigans, and somehow managed to graduate with my BFA. It did not take me long after graduating to realize that, while I still wanted to tell stories, film was no longer my desired method.
So, like any 22-year-old with nothing to lose, I enrolled in grad school. In California State University, Northridge’s Mass Communication MA program, I tried on all kinds of storytelling hats, including long-form prose, broadcast journalism, and podcasting. But nothing stuck out to me quite like comics did.
I latched onto the medium very quickly, using my required thesis project to dive in headfirst. What emerged was a project called Anhecomics, where I interview anonymous people who suffer from clinical depression and turn their stories into short graphic narratives. This project earned me several accolades, including my class’s Outstanding Thesis Award and a grant from the Association of Retired Faculty.
Anhecomics is still an ongoing project, and I eventually want to turn it into a book. I also create mini graphic memoirs surrounding subjects such as asexuality and religious deconstruction.