A friend of mine introduced me to her comics and at first, I really didn't get it. Her drawing style is not pretty or tidy—it seems to flail across the page a bit—and her stories are heartbreaking. But after spending more time with her work, and especially after discovering her workbooks, I fell hard for her imagination and deep commitment to exploring the impact of images on people.
When I mention her name in conversation, sometimes people don't know who I'm talking about - until I mention that she wrote Eat Pray Love. Though that's her most well known book, she's also written two novels (her newest, The Signature of All Things is brilliant), a biography, another memoir, a collection of short stories, and countless articles and essays. Her books have been best-sellers, she has won numerous awards, and Eat Pray Love was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts
A musician that got her start performing in the punk-cabaret band the Dresden Dolls and is still touring. She became famous outside of her music circles when she launched a very successful (well over $1 million) Kickstarter campaign to fund her album and tour. Some people thought it was great that she was ditching the label model and connecting directly with her fans, some people thought she was misusing the platform and didn't deserve to get so much money. She has since done a TedTalk and written a book, both called The Art of Asking, about how and why she decided to take such a drastically different approach. She is married to fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman - another one of my creative role models.
