 Nate Powell | |  | EISNER AWARD WINNER
(Writer/Artist - Swallow Me Whole; Sounds of Your Name; Any Empire; The Silence Of Our Friends) | |  | |  Nate Powell is a graphic novelist, publisher, and musician. He owns DIY punk record label Harlan Records, has performed in several punk bands (including Universe, Divorce Chord, WAIT, Soophie Nun Squad, Boomfancy, and Gioteens), and occasionally performed hip hop as Featherweight MC. From 1997 to 2002 he was an actor and skit writer for North Little Rock sketch comedy show Fun And Games. From 1999 to 2009, he worked as a caregiver for adults with developmental disabilities.
Powell moved from North Little Rock, Arkansas to Great Falls, Montana in 1980, and then again to Montgomery, Alabama in 1983 before returning to North Little Rock in 1988 upon his father's retirement from the Air Force. He began self-publishing comics in 1992 with age 14 with Mike Lierly and Nathan Wilson. Powell graduated from North Little Rock High School in 1996, briefly attended George Washington University in Washington, DC, and graduated from School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2000 after receiving the Outstanding Cartooning Student award and the Shakespeare & Company Books Self-Publishing Grant, with which he funded the first issue of Walkie Talkie.
Powell lived intermittently in central Arkansas while calling East Lansing, Michigan, South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island home from 2001 to 2003. He settled in Bloomington, Indiana in early 2004.
His 2008 graphic novel Swallow Me Whole won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Debut, as well as the 2009 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Artist. On March 2, 2009, it was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Young Adult Fiction category. It received the 2009 Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, and was also nominated for Best Writer/Artist and Best Lettering.
Powell is currently drawing Any Empire (forthcoming on Top Shelf Productions in 2011), and drawing the graphic novel The Silence Of Our Friends (forthcoming on First Second Books in 2012), written by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos. | | | | | | | | |
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