Joe Sacco

Graphic novelist

Joe Sacco is an American graphic novelist who has worked extensively in the Middle East. He is the author of the 1996 graphic novel Palestine, which won an American Book Award, and several other comic books and graphic novels, including Christmas with Karadzic (2007) and War Junkie (2007).

Sacco was born in Malta, before moving to Los Angeles in late childhood, and was educated at the University of Oregon before briefly working at the National Notary Association. He returned to Malta in the 1980s and worked for a local newspaper, before moving back to the US in 1985 to work for the magazine Portland Permanent Press. The magazine closed down within two years, and Sacco obtained a job at The Comics Journal. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001, which enabled him to produce Safe Area Goražde, The Fixer, and other graphic novels about the Bosnian war. He has contributed to the Guardian and Harper's Magazine.