Craig Thompson

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© Phil Thompson 2024

A close-up of Craig Thompson.

Craig Thompson

Author and illustrator Craig Thompson’s new graphic memoir, Ginseng Roots, spans from the farm fields of Wisconsin (where he worked as a youth weeding ginseng beds) to the world of international commerce. It's Thompson's first return to autobiographical storytelling since Blankets, his 2003 Harvey- and Eisner Award-winning book. “Thompson has a particular genius for unsentimental depictions of blue-collar American life and its competing pressures, loyalties and traumas,” writes Sam Thielman in the New York Times review. Thompson will discuss the book with Doug Moe, and a livestream is available.

About Ginseng Roots:

From the celebrated author of Blankets and Habibi comes a new graphic memoir exploring the class divide, childhood labor, family, and our globalized world—all centered on Wisconsin's ginseng farming industry.

“A sweeping story, gorgeously drawn and beautifully told — this is Craig Thompson’s masterpiece.” —Joe Sacco, author of Palestine and Paying the Land

When Blankets first published in 2003, Craig Thompson's seminal memoir about first love and faith lost in rural Wisconsin debuted to rapturous acclaim. The winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, it is to this day considered one of the all-time great works of graphic storytelling. Now, in Craig's long-awaited return to the autobiographical form, comes the story that Blankets left out.

Ginseng Roots follows Craig and his siblings, who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour. In his trademark breathtaking pen-and-ink work, Craig interweaves this lost youth with the 300-year-old history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together—from ginseng hunters in ancient China, to industrial farmers and migrant harvesters in the American Midwest, to his own family still grappling with the aftershocks of the bitter past. 

Stretching from Marathon, Wisconsin, to Northeast China, Ginseng Roots charts the rise of industrial agriculture, the decline of American labor, and the search for a sense of home in a rapidly changing world.

About Craig Thompson:

CRAIG THOMPSON is a cartoonist and the author of the award-winning books Blankets, Carnet de Voyage, Good-bye Chunky Rice, and Habibi. He was born in Michigan in 1975 and grew up in a rural farming community in central Wisconsin. His graphic novel Blankets has won numerous awards, including the Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz Awards, and has been published in nearly twenty languages. He lives in Portland, Oregon.