A Graphic Diary of the War in Ukraine: Nora Krug on the contrasting realities of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist in the first year of Russian invasion

EPISODE 1824: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Nora Krug, author of DIARIES OF WAR, about the contrasting realities of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist in the first year of the Russian invasion

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies internationally. Her illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals by the Society of Illustrators and the NY Art Directors Club. Krug is a recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and others. Her books are included in the Library of Congress and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Krug was named Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and 2019 Book Illustration Prize Winner by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Scribner, 2018, foreign edition title Heimat), about WWII and her own German family history, was chosen as a best book of the year by the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. It was the winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, the Society of Illustrators silver medal, and the British Book Design and Production Award, among others. Her collaboration with historian Timothy Snyder, a graphic edition of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Ten Speed Press, 2021), was named a Best Graphic Novel of 2021 by the New York Times, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, one of Germany’s Most Beautiful Books of 2022 and won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators. Diaries of War, her Pulitzer Prize-nominated book of graphic journalism that chronicles the contrasting experiences of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist, both grappling with the realities of Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022, won the Oversea’s Press Club’s Best Cartoon Award runner-up citation. Her visual biography, Kamikaze, about a surviving Japanese WWII pilot, was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics and Best Non-Required Reading, and her animations were shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Krug is Associate Professor of Illustration at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Prior to her professorship at Parsons, Krug served as a Professor of Illustration at Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, Germany. She holds a B.A. Honours degree in Performance Design from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a Diplom in Visual Communications from the University of Arts Berlin, and an M.F.A. in Illustration as a Visual Essay from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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