An Evening with Nora Krug, author of Riders Read book of the year: Diaries of War
Book Reading and Q&A

Fri, Apr 3 2026 3 - 8 pm
Prescott Campus

©Photo by Marty Umans

The Literary Southwest will host a Book Reading and Q&A with Nora Krug.

3:00 PM - Informal Meeting with students

6:00 PM - Reception

7:00 PM - On-Stage Conversation with Nora Krug with readings followed by Audience Q&A

About the Author
Nora Krug is a German-American author and artist. Her books were published in 21 countries, and her illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals by both 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 visual memoir Heimat / Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, 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 and Discipline Winner Cubes, 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 was named a Best Graphic Novel of 2021 by the New York Times, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and one of Germany’s Most Beautiful Books of 2022.

Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia, her 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 Overseas Press Club’s Best Cartoon Award runner-up citation and was named one of Germany’s Most Beautiful Books of 2024.

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. 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. She was a fellow at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies in 2024 and 2025, and is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

About Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia
Powerful graphic journalism that highlights the contrasting realities of a Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist grappling with their own individual experiences of Russia’s war on Ukraine – collected, edited, and illustrated by award-winning author Nora Krug.

Immediately after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug reached out to two anonymous subjects — “K.,” a Russia-born Ukrainian journalist, and “D.,” a Russian artist — and began what would become a year of correspondence. Based on her weekly interviews with K. and D., Krug created this collection of illustrated accounts that chronicles two viewpoints from opposite sides of the border throughout the first year in this ongoing war.

With millions displaced, injured or killed as a result of the invasion, Krug presents a look at the devastating effects on an everyday, individual level. Diaries of War doesn’t portray a quintessential Russian or Ukrainian perspective. It doesn’t aim to create a space for reconciliation, to equalize the Russian and Ukrainian experiences, or to tell the story of a “good Russian.” Rather, it documents the stark contrast between two narratives shaped by this war on opposite sides of the border. K.’s diary documents a year of emotional and existential distress. She experiences loss in every sense of the word: the death of those close to her, the disconnection from her family and friends, the devastation of her country—but her account is also a story about bravery and survival in the face of dire uncertainty.

In juxtaposition, D.’s narrative expresses his disdain for his government’s brutal actions and details his attempts at emigrating his family abroad. He navigates his own struggle with cultural identity, guilt and lack of action in the face of a tyrannical regime—a necessary perspective that challenges readers to confront the fallibility of their own moral integrity and the political actions of their own countries.

Published as an Op-Comic series with the Los Angeles Times, with a portion of the entries unique to this book, Diaries of War is a harrowing real-time record of an international conflict that continues to devastate countless lives.

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Yavapai College Library presents The Literary Southwest is made possible by Yavapai College and the Yavapai College Foundation.

Literary Southwest Team