Kayla E.
“I know this is not a super common perspective, especially for creative people who tend to be a little judgmental, but I think that there’s something holy and beautiful about any human being making art. Whether it’s someone drawing comics at a really high level, experimenting with paint-by-numbers, or just doodling stick figures; whatever it is that compels us to create is a kind of magic.”
“Precious Rubbish may help you come to terms with some things you’ve been privately avoiding or even things about yourself you didn’t know.”
“Precious Rubbish is a scream as precisely pitched as a middle C from a tuning fork. ... Her work is such an unexpected mixture of control and frankness that it is impossible to ignore.”
“Kayla E. uses her medium to striking effect: her wry portrait reveals a fresh eye, at once vulnerable and undaunted.”
“This four-color atomic bomb of a comic signals the arrival of a formidable talent.”
Kayla E. is a Mexican American artist from Texas. She is the author of Precious Rubbish (Fantagraphics, 2025), which won the 2025 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel, received an Honorable Mention in the 2025 International Latino Book Awards, and earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The book is forthcoming in Spanish and French translation and is included in the New York Public Library’s 2025 Best Books of the Year, Booklist’s Best 10 Graphic Biographies & Memoirs of 2025, A.V. Club’s Best Comics of 2025, and The Guardian’s Best Graphic Novels of 2025.
In 2026, she received a Creative Capital Award for her next graphic memoir, I Will Give You Rest. Her work has earned two Eisner Award nominations and appears in The New Yorker, NOW (the New Comics Anthology), Ecotone, and The Comics Journal, among others. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, she won the Albert Alcalay Prize in Visual Arts, and in 2023–2024 she held a Hodder Fellowship in Creative Writing at Princeton University.
Her work has been exhibited by museums and galleries including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Culture Hole, Central Server Works / Marian Cramer Projects, Marfa Invitational, and the Goss-Michael Foundation / Hignite Projects. She served as editor-in-chief of the Whiting Award–winning literary magazine Nat. Brut for nine years and co-edited a collection of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy comic strips (Fantagraphics, 2026).
When asked if she was surprised by the critical reception to Precious Rubbish, she replied: “I decided to believe with my whole heart that Precious Rubbish is valuable, both as a work of art and as a tool for healing. I have since become my biggest advocate. No one believes in this book more than me (except for maybe my wife, Laura). I am a fighter for it. There have definitely been a few moments along the way where I've felt discouraged or discounted. I think that is one of those things that many of us in a lot of industries feel — the fear that you're overselling yourself, or that you should be taking up less space. But I refuse to give up. I see firsthand the impact this work has on readers. I know that it can be used as a tool for good and I am determined to get it read. I have worked so hard to make this book a success. So no, I am not surprised by the response. But I am definitely delighted and grateful.
Kayla works as Creative Director at Fantagraphics and lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs.
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