Zara Slattery is a graphic novelist, illustrator and tutor. Her first full length graphic memoir, Coma Comic, was shortlisted for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition 2018, The Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2020 and longlisted for the LDComics Awards 2019.
Having studied an MA in Design Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University exploring the interplay between illustration and theatre, Zara has brought her interests together in the form of graphic narratives. Her self-published comics include Two Birds (a graphic short collection with Myfawny Tristram) and Don’t Call Me A Tomboy (A WildSlattern Production with Kirsten Wild). Her work playfully explores identity, art and feminism.
Zara was commissioned in 2012 to run Sketches By Boz comic workshops for the British Council in Greece and Malta. She teaches comic art, drawing and painting at the Friends Centre, Brighton and runs community workshops in Sussex and around the UK. She lives in Brighton.
Interviews and Features
Podcast - Interview by Anna Burtt, The Brighton Book Club
At 36 minutes in, Zara talks to Anna Burtt about her art, and why comics are the perfect vehicle for telling difficult stories.
Hear the podcastBBC News: Brighton artist turns coma hallucinations into graphic novel
Zara Slattery was interviewed about her experience of being in a coma, and the making of the book, by BBC South East health correspondent Mark Norman. A shorter report is available on BBC News online to watch here.
Brighton & Sussex Medical School: Zara in Slattery in Conversation
Bobbie Farsides of BSMS talks with Zara Slattery about the creation of Coma – joined by Zara’s husband Dan, whose diaries and recollections were key to the book; Lucy Pitt, Matron on the intensive care unit in Brighton, who was part of the team caring for Zara; and Dr Barbara Philips, Reader in Intensive Care Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) who met with Zara during the book’s creation. Watch here.
Podcast - Zara Slattery in conversation with Jude Cowan Montague
Hear the podcastThe Comics Journal
‘I first became aware of Zara Slattery’s graphic memoir Coma when it was just a work in progress presented at the Graphic Medicine conference in 2019. Something special, something different, Zara’s story mixed the macabre and the mundane in a way I’d not seen done before. She’d gone through the most horrific, nightmare-like experience and she had the skill set to visually describe it through her comics.’
Read ‘There’s No Sugar Coating The Nightmare’ – Joe Decie’s interview with Zara Slattery – in The Comics Journal here.
Panel Borders: Alex Fitch interviews Zara Slattery
Interview with Zara Slattery about her ‘fantastical visions’, first broadcast on Resonance FM on 5 May 2021. Listen here.
The Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2020: Zara Slattery, shortlisted
The 2020 Arts Foundation’s Futures Awards announced Zara Slattery, author of upcoming graphic memoir, Comic Coma, as one of their four shortlisted artists within the comics category, alongside Esther McManus, Danny Noble and Jess Taylor.
Broken Frontier covered the awards with a lovely interview with each artist, online HERE.
ZARA SLATTERY: “I started as an illustrator who likes to tell stories. I’ve always experimented with visual storytelling, in the past combining live action and illustration for both live performances and character and story development. I started playing around with comics after joining a writing group and being introduced to some amazing comic books and artists. I love creating silent comics and very much like to process of writing as I draw, and weaving myself along a story. Equally I enjoy the structure of translating text, thumbnailing and researching. My themes vary from silly to serious; and tend to be on subjects of identity, art, culture, and graphic medicine. I share my work online, and my work-in-progress primarily on Instagram. Much of my work can be seen on my website and I have a poorly run Etsy shop.”