Leela Corman
Leela Corman is an American cartoonist and illustrator.[1] Corman created the 2012 graphic novel Unterzakhn, which follows the lives of Jewish twin sisters growing up in the tenements of New York City's Lower East Side at the turn of the last century. Unterzakhn was published by Schocken Books and nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Eisner Award, and Le Prix Artemisia. Portions of Unterzakhn were serialized in HEEB magazine and Lilith magazine.
Leela Corman
Early life and college years[edit]
Corman was born in 1972 in Massachusetts.[2] Her father's side of the family is Russian Jewish, while her mother's side is Jewish from Poland.[2] Leela's grandmother taught her Yiddish, which became a common motif in her work.[3] Corman's grandfather lost several family members in the Holocaust.[4] Corman became interested in comics at the age of 13 and went on to study painting, printmaking, and illustration at the Massachusetts College of Art, She self-published three issues of the minicomic, Flimflam, while still in college, and won a 1999 Xeric Grant for the graphic novel Queen’s Day.
Personal life[edit]
Corman is married to fellow cartoonist (and SAW faculty member) Tom Hart.[16] Corman met Hart in Gainesville, Florida, where they currently reside and he was also a co-founder of the Sequential Artists Workshop.[5][17] Hart's book Rosalie Lightning (St. Martin's Press, 2016) is named after their daughter, who died suddenly when she was almost two, and is about Hart and Corman's grief and their attempts to make sense of their life afterwards.[18] Corman addressed the loss of her loss of the child in her work, “PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals,” published by Nautilus Magazine.[19] She credited her work to being a type of Exposure Therapy.[19] The couple have since had another child.[18]
Awards and nominations[edit]
Corman's first award was a Xerix Award in 1999 for her first graphic novel, Queen's Day.[5] For her 2012 graphic novel, Unterzakhn, Corman earned a Le Prix Millepages award and best Anglo-American comic at Rome Festival.[6] She was also nominated for an LA Times Book Award, Eisner award, and Le Prix Artemisia in France.[5]