Spend your lunch hour with National Book Award-winning cartoonist Nate Powell as part of a citywide series of engagements in partnership with the Rust Belt Humanities Lab at Ursuline College titled Cleveland, Ohio: Laboratory of Democracy! The discussion, moderated by CIA faculty member George N. Ramírez, will explore Powell’s creative work across both fiction and nonfiction, including civil rights icon John Lewis’s March trilogy and its follow-up Run, as well as his comics adaptation of James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. 

The discussion will take place during Lunch on Fridays from 12:15 to 1:30pm Friday, March 20 in CIA's Peter B. Lewis Theater. 

Speaker Bios:

Nate Powell is a National Book Award-winning cartoonist who began self-publishing as an Arkansas teenager in 1992. Creating both fiction and nonfiction, his work includes Fall Through, Save It For Later, Come Again, civil rights icon John Lewis’s March trilogy and its follow-up Run, a comics adaptation of James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, and individual issues of The Twilight Zone, Sweet Tooth, and Black Hammer.  

He has published comics and writing for The Washington Post, The Nib, Popula, Lit Hub, Booklist, In These Times, Scholastic, CNN, and The Weather Channel. 

Powell’s work has received multiple Eisner and Ignatz Awards, ALA and YALSA distinctions, the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award, CXC Transformative Work Award, and is a two-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.  

His next graphic novel, Diana, will be released by Abrams ComicArts in October 2026. 

George N. Ramírez is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He teaches courses in visual culture and media studies. Ramírez's research broadly focuses on questions of materiality, mediation, and racialization in Latino popular culture. His in-progress monograph, Brown Physics of Media: Sensing Race and Touching Matter in Rarefactions, proposes touch as a framework for analyzing the production and consumption of soul music, comic books, digital video, and video games.

Parking: Lunch on Fridays attendees may park in CIA's Lot 73 and Annex Lot, both of which surround our campus. Please note that signs posted around those lots correctly state that parking typically requires a CIA permit or visitor pass and that violators will be ticketed. However, to accommodate our valued Lunch on Fridays attendees, that policy won't be enforced during the program. Have questions? Please contact Reinberger Gallery at reinbergergallery@cia.edu or 216.421.7407.

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