Karrie Fransman is a visual storyteller, graphic novelist and comics creator. Her comics and graphic stories have been published by The UN, The Guardian, The Times, BBC, The Royal Society of Literature, The Arts Council and for The British Red Cross. She was The Royal Society of Literature’s Artist-in-Residence 2025-2026. She is Creative Director at PositiveNegatives.org who uses comics and animation to amplify academic research and is a founding member of The Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC) that aims to raise awareness of the value of comics in the UK. She developed an award winning comic, ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’ about an Iranian teenage refugee, for The British Red Cross, created an installation for the British Council and Southbank Centre and was commissioned to make a ‘Selves Portrait’ for an exhibition with Manchester Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.
Her first graphic novel, ‘The House That Groaned’, was published by Penguin Random House’s Square Peg in 2012. It received praise from film director Nicolas Roeg and was chosen as Graphic Novel of the Month in the Observer. Her second graphic novel ‘Death of the Artist’ was published by Jonathan Cape in 2015 and has been awarded a grant from the Arts Council England. It won an award for ‘Best Graphic Novel of 2015’ from Broken Frontier and was chosen as one of The Observer’s best graphic novels of 2015. She published ‘Gender Swapped Fairy Tales’ (Faber & Faber 2020) – an illustrated book that she co-created with Jonathan Plackett that has received favourable reviews in The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Mail, Creative Review, The Daily Express and was chosen as WH Smith’s and The Bookseller’s Book of the Month. It was published in 7 languages and is currently exhibited at The British Library in their Fairy Tales exhibition. The success of that book resulted in ‘Gender Swapped Greek Myths’ (Faber & Faber, 2022).
Karrie has spoken and run workshops for The Guardian Masterclasses, TEDx, The Tate, Central Saint Martins, The Hay Festival, Cambridge University, Oxford University, The British Council, The Big Draw, House of Illustration, Institute Francais, ARVON, The Institute of Contemporary Arts and the British Library, and presented her work in Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Russia, Bangladesh, Croatia, Corsica, Finland, Lebanon, France, Malta, Mexico and Peru. You can follow her on social media @KarrieFransman or find more of her work at karriefransman.com
Short Bio
Karrie Fransman is a comic creator. Her comics have been published in The Guardian, The Times, Time Out, The Telegraph, the BBC, The New Statesman and by The Arts Council. Her illustrated books, ‘Gender Swapped Fairy Tales’ (2020) and ‘Gender Swapped Greek Myths'(2023) were co-created with Jonathan Plackett and published by Faber & Faber. She published two graphic novels with Penguin Random House; ‘The House That Groaned’ (2012), and the award winning ‘Death of the Artist’ (2015). She developed an award winning comic, ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’ about an Iranian teenage refugee, for The British Red Cross, created an installation for the British Council and Southbank Centre and was commissioned to make a ‘Selves Portrait’ for an exhibition with Manchester Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. She has spoken and run workshops at The Guardian Masterclasses, Tate Modern, TEDx, Central Saint Martins, Oxford University, The Hay Festival, The Big Draw, House of Illustration and The British Library, and presented her work worldwide from Russia to Bangladesh, Lebanon and Mexico. You can find more of her work at www.karriefransman.com
E-mail Karrie: karriefransman(at)gmail.com
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