Nicole J. Georges is an award-winning illustrator, graphic novelist, podcaster & professor from Portland, OR and Los Angeles, CA.
She is the author of the graphic memoirs Calling Dr. Laura, and Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. Calling Dr. Laura was called “engrossing, lovable, smart and ultimately poignant” by Rachel Maddow, and “disarming and haunting, hip and sweet, all at once” by Alison Bechdel. Her podcast adaptation of the book with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Relative Fiction, won an Edward R. Murrow Award.
Nicole has been publishing autobiographical comics about her queer vegan life for the past 25 years, evolving from teen zinester to graphic novelist. Her work explores themes including identity, family secrets, queer community, animals, self-help, and the inner workings of a queer, punk feminist from a Syrian-American home.
She has been leading comics-based self-care and grief workshops worldwide since 2020. She has been commissioned to lead these workshops with the Shubbak Festival of Arab Culture, the Sequential Arts Workshop for cartoonists, and with groups of therapists and medical professionals from Oregon Health and Science University.
Nicole was the director and lead artist in a 10-year-long, weekly zine & comics project with senior citizens at the Marie Smith Center in Portland, Oregon. Along with collaborators, Nicole worked with elders with dementia and physical disabilities to translate their histories and lives into comics and prose, publishing these works as a series of zines and a book called Tell It Like It Tiz.
She is the author of the long-running emotional support animal illustration series, Anonymous Fuzzball, which will be out as a book, Emotional Support Animals, with Andrews McMeel in 2026. She is currently hard at work on a middle-grade graphic novel, The Ballad of X-Ray and Koko (Holiday House, 2027), and a graphic memoir, Relative Fiction (Ten Speed Press, 2028).
When she’s not drawing, Nicole teaches comics independently and through California College for the Art’s MFA in Comics Program. She produces and hosts a queer art, advice & vegan food podcast, Sagittarian Matters, and co-hosts The Gaymazing Race for USC with author and professor Karen Tongson.
NJG profiled on Oregon Art Beat, and reviewed in the New York Times.
