Kate Evans, cartoonist, author and public speaker.
Browse the buttons above to sample major projects, or scroll down for recent posts.
Don't Call Me Princess! Out now! The brand new anti-fairytale for girls of all ages. A quirky, funny kids book for people who aspire to more in life than finding a handsome prince.
Threads from the refugee crisis, is the first graphic novel ever to be listed for the Orwell Prize for Books. “Gripping and beautiful. This is comics journalism at its finest.” – Alison Bechdel. “Haunting… Again and again, [Evans’s] narrative emphasises the desperation of people trying to reach safety… The appalling threads of these people’s lives coalesce to form a bigger picture with an underlying message: we need to treat our fellow humans with care and respect.” Times Literary Supplement.
Red Rosa, the graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg was selected as a ‘graphic book of the year’ choice by both the Independent and Observer newspapers, and was so successful that it sold out here in the UK on the day of its official launch. 11 international editions available.
We also have Bump: how to make grow and birth a baby a truly groundbreaking ‘choose your own adventure’ approach to fertility, pregnancy and birth, and British breastfeeding bestseller The Food of Love – attachment parenting explained in the funniest, freshest, least preachy way possible.
Funny Weather We're Having At the Moment Isn't it Dear: Everything you Didn't Want to Know about Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out. Remember climate change? That climate change? The one that is still happening? Find out how, why and what to do about it in this pocket-sized comic guide.
"Kate Evans is one of the most original talents in comics I’ve seen in a long time."
Steve Bell, The Guardian.
"This @cartoonkate is a bona fide genius."
George Monbiot
Recent Posts
Escape to Safelandia
What are refugees? Why are they coming here? What happens when they get here? Read this fun ‘choose your misadventure’ story, and find out… HOW TO HELP Please consider a donating to either of these charities: Bristol Refugee Rights is a charity providing practical support to asylum seekers in Bristol, and fighting for their rights and entitlements. BRR’s specialised support workers help asylum seekers with every aspect of their asylum claim. Phone Credit for Refugees is a volunteer-run charity providing mobile phone top-ups for refugees and displaced people wherever it ...
We are all boiling frogs…
Cartoons from my regular strip in New Internationalist Magazine. We are all boiling frogs. Image description: two frogs in a pan of water on a gas ring. First frog exclaims, in anguish, “Melting ice! Record-breaking temperatures! Unexpected flooding! We should be worried about climate change RIGHT NOW!!!”. Second frog is laid-back and unworried. “Oh, you’re such a doom-monger. Why can’t you just relax and enjoy the lovely, warm conditions.” In the next panel, bubbles of simmering water start to appear. Second frog exclaims happily “Oooh! Look! A fun, new jacuzzi effect!” ...
As probably not endorsed by Keira Knightley or Kristen Bell
DON’T CALL ME PRINCESS! Don’t Call Me Princess has arrived. It’s the feminist retake on fairy tales that I can’t believe that nobody else has ever written before. It’s launched, and it’s lovely. My other books pale beside its bubblegum brightness and its cheery, cheeky illustrations. Of course, I still love my previous books, and I used to think they were reasonably glamorous, but now, compared to this one, they seem to have acquired a kind of ‘whole food’ aesthetic. Oooooh! It’s so gorgeous and shiny and edible! I can’t ...
Don’t Call Me Princess! – the backstory.
The How, When and Why of Don’t Call Me Princess Our story starts, dear reader, about five years ago when my daughter looked like this: Quite little, huh? And we were in the Sure Start Centre (RIP), at playgroup, and there was a dressing-up box, and she put on a blue shiny dress. You know the sort – the ones the Disney corporation and Tescos punt to our little ones. Whereupon all the other adults in the room exclaimed “Oh! You’re a princess!” “Pretty as a princess!” and I was ...
Early Pregnancy, Smells, Sickness and Hunger – excerpt from Bump
This is an excerpt from Bump: How To Make, Grow and Birth A Baby Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. The Smells Stop! Don’t open the peanut butter jar! You don’t understand. when you open the jar, this is how peanut buttery it smells. The Sickness ‘Morning’ sickness is the clichéd sign of early pregnancy. It doesn’t just happen in the morning. 80% of pregnant women experience some nausea, and it’s most likely to be severe in the early months of ...
Ouch! Common Breastfeeding Complaints – excerpt from Food of Love
This is an excerpt from The Food of Love Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. “The breasts, especially after delivery, are liable to divers diseases; as inflammations, excoriations, indurations, tumefactions, nodes, absesses, schirrufes… ’ A supplement to Mr Chambers Cyclopedia 1753 For many women, breastfeeding is a completely pain-free experience. I have to admit though that, among my friends, they’re in the minority. The good news is that none of the complaints that are listed in this chapter will affect ...
How often should you feed your baby (Part 2)
This is an excerpt from The Food of Love Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. Human beings are a tribal species. Just as surely as fish swim in shoals and wildebeest run in herds, we have evolved to live in a close-knit, extended family group. There is a common saying in many countries that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, and if we were living as we were designed to live, at least twenty other people would be ...
How often should you feed your baby? (Part 1) Excerpt from The Food Of Love
This is an excerpt from The Food of Love Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. First, some advice from the ‘experts’. ‘By two weeks, your baby… should manage to last three to four hours between feeds.’ The New Little Contented Baby Book ‘The infant should be put to the breast at regular intervals of about four hours.’ Chambers Encyclopedia, Vol 10, 1880 ‘A baby that is latched on correctly will rarely need to spend more than an hour feeding.’ What ...
‘You’ll ruin your figure!’ – Excerpt from The Food of Love
This is an excerpt from The Food of Love Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. Do you remember when you were a child, playing with your Barbie Doll and thinking about what life would be like when you were Grown Up? Well, d’you know what? Real women don’t look like that. What do women actually look like? Do we even know? Take this representation of the female form. Titian painted Venus Anadyomene in 1520. She looks pretty realistic, except for ...
How to feed your baby – excerpt from The Food Of Love
This is an excerpt from The Food of Love Please feel free to share the images and the post but don’t forget to credit www.cartoonkate.co.uk. The thing is, babies don’t feed from the breast the same way that they feed from a bottle. To bottle-feed a baby, you place the rubber teat of the bottle between her gums, she sucks and the milk drips in. You don’t force the end of the teat way back into the baby’s mouth. That would choke her. Breastfeeding is different. Here the baby’s gums have to ...
Wanna own a picture of Boris Johnson as a pile of snot?
Hello Internets. I am selling the original artwork for this, my first ever Canary political cartoon post. It’s a very tidy, vibrant colour pencil piece with, as a bonus, Rees-Mogg as a vampire impaled on his own crucifix. £900 ono. Gwan, celebrate the dying days of this Tory Government (I hope I’m not premature.) UPDATE: Half of the proceeds will be donated to Phone Credit for Refugees. See more about the vital work they do here ...
The Threads excerpts on the Internets
A few different media outlets have been intrigued by my latest graphic novel, and ran Threads excerpts. Vice.com took a section about the impressive volunteer relief effort in Calais. They laid it out really nicely, and it’s lovely self-contained section. Unfortunately, they then added the horrendously click-baity title “Inside the Notorious Camp Where Refugees Sewed Their Lips Shut” which, frankly, made me want to sew the sub-editor’s lips shut, but still. The Guardian ran a few pages about a central “character” in the book, Hoshyar, (who is really a real person, ...
Read the first chapter. Threads: the Calais Cartoon
This is the original blog post that I wrote in October 2015 after a brief visit to the Calais Jungle refugee camp. Threads: the Calais cartoon. After I got back, the comic kind of vomited itself out of me. I was overwhelmed by the experience of meeting the people living in the Jungle, but that’s nothing compared to the reality of having to live in such conditions. When I got back, people would ask me “What was it like?” and I would be dumbfounded, at a loss for how to ...
If the law is wrong, then break it.
Portrait of an unnamed arrested suffragette. Coloured pencil and ink on paper. February 2017 ...
A day at Dunkirk refugee camp.
“The worst refugee camp in the world” Here’s some art that I’ve worked up, potentially for the Dunkirk refugee camp section of Threads. It’s historic now, in that the camp was closed down and replaced with a far better one in March of this year. It’s still good to make a record of what has been described as the worst refugee camp in the world. And given today’s horrendous media storm over a handful of child refugees arriving in the UK, it’s good to remember how many children are stuck ...
#ChickenCoup. The Eagle has landed!
#ChickenCoup This cartoon is a reaction to the news that Angela Eagle launched a leadership bid against Jeremy Corbyn. I do wish that the Labour party would concentrate on fighting the Tories rather than each other ...
Read the sample: ‘Threads from the Refugee Crisis’
More threads from the refugee crisis. I have some additional material from Calais that I’m planning to incorporate into a graphic novel, forthcoming from Verso 2017. I worked up some colour pages, to see how long it takes. Coloured pencil is such a lovely medium. It still takes ages tho. If reading this inspires you to practical action, www.calaidipedia.co.uk has all the information you will need. If you are in a position to donate any money, no matter how little, then the registered charity Phone Credit for Refugees ensures that it ...
Phone credit for refugees
Things are busy in cartoonkateland at the moment. I have a new book in the pipeline, and I’m trying to plough through 150 pages of roughs.When I saw a request on Facebook “does anyone know how to get in touch with Kate Evans” I answered it with an extremely wary “Why?” But, it was the Phone Credit for Refugees Facebook group, who are in the process of setting up as a registered charity, requesting some logo design. Once I found that out, I couldn’t say no. Because they saved the ...
Red Rosa makes the Bread and Roses shortlist
Red Rosa has been shortlisted for the Bread and Roses award. I’ll be at the London Radical Bookfair on May 7th for the ceremony, where I’ll be giving a talk on the making of the book. I am not taking the suspense well. Will Dr Luxemburg triumph against the five other extremely wonderful books on the shortlist? Or, as is statistically more likely, will she not? ...
London Review Bookshop podcast for International Women’s Day
This March, we’re celebrating women graphic novelists in honour of International Women’s Day on the 8th. As part of our spotlight on Kate Evans, the creator of the cult hit Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, we present the inaugural Verso podcast in collaboration with the London Review Bookshop and a giveaway competition where you can win a limited edition Rosa Luxemburg tote bags containing a copy of Red Rosa, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg and The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg. Listen to the podcast to answer the questions ...
Introducing… the Rosa Luxembag!
To celebrate Red Rosa’s runaway success, Verso have chosen an iconic screenprint of Dr Luxemburg for their latest publicity wheeze. If you’re able to appreciate the ironic appeal of an anti-capitalist shopping bag head over to my webshop. Cheers ...
Children of Calais.
I can draw pictures. That’s something I can do. I could sort clothes in the L’Auberge du Migrants warehouse, or distribute donations in the Calais Jungle, or carry firewood and build benders in the Dunkirk refugee swamp, but I decide to draw pictures, not of people, but for people. For people who have very little; not even a country to call their home. I pack drawing inks because once they’re dry, they won’t run. I buy thick cartridge paper to make the portraits more durable, and plastic sleeves to protect ...
Radio Rosa
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. Two audio interviews about Red Rosa: Interview with Mitchel Cohen, WBIA radio New York. Francesca Rheannon: The Writer’s Voice podcast (also contains fascinating interview with Ted Rall about Edward Snowden) ...
Broadly interview: Rosa Luxemburg, the cat lady
[This interview by Colette Shade is from Broadly, the women’s bits of Vice] Doomed revolutionary, a sexual renegade, a dynamo with a limp, and a prescient critic of both capitalism and Bolshevism, Rosa Luxemburg’s extraordinary life has always deserved a wider audience. Full of travel, political drama, sexual freedom and intellectual feuds — Luxemburg’s journey out of Poland to becoming a leader of the German Communist uprising certainly contains enough excitement to fill the pages of a graphic novel. Thankfully, Kate Evans—a jovial, pink-haired British cartoonist—was commissioned to write and ...
Interview on Red Rosa: Truth Out talk artistic process and economic prescience
[This article by Joe Macaré accompanies Truth Out’s feature of Red Rosa as its Progressive Pick] Red Rosa‘s author is British cartoonist Kate Evans, hailed by the Guardian’s Steve Bell as “one of the most original talents in comics I’ve seen in a long time.” Truthout spoke with Evans about how the project came to be, how Luxemburg’s prose inspired the book’s art and what lessons we can learn today from the life and works of this extraordinary woman. Joe Macaré: Where did the idea come from to do a ...
Merry Christmas and all that.
Massive <3 to John McDonnell for defending his Who’s Who entry (“hobbies: fermenting world revolution”) on the Today programme. “Oh no, I don’t regret it at all.” ...
21st Century Cop Out
A comic history of the COP climate negotiations. “I laughed so much I nearly choked.” – Susan, Indonesia. This cartoon first appeared as part of New Internationalist’s excellent online coverage of the 2015 Paris Climate Summit ...
Not bad for a Sunday morning scribble.
I spent last Sunday morning drawing Jeremy Corbyn in coloured pencils (because it’s quicker than ink). I stuck it up on Facebook and twitter, and felt guilty about the kids spending three hours in front of CBeebies. I didn’t even load it onto my blog. Looks like I hit a nerve. Check out these viewing figures! More viral than my hideous cold. Thank you social media. (update: 109,000 and counting. This social meeja business is addictive) ...
Threads. The Calais cartoon.
Eight hundred and fifty thousand people fled for their lives to Europe last year. (At least three thousand four hundred and six people died in the Mediterranean sea.) Of that great mass of people, a few thousand have washed up Calais, France, trying to attempt the dangerous crossing to England. By the French and British governments, they’ve been hung out to dry. Thanks to the generosity of my crowd funders, I printed and distributed “about 12,000” copies of this cartoon. These were taken by grassroots refugee support groups and sold in aid of ...
#piggate
Some things are way too obvious for a cartoon. Instead, here’s a picture inspired by the Today programme’s complete inability to report today’s news ...
#budget2015
Today, in a country which is becoming rapidly more unequal, and where rising numbers of people are reliant on food banks, including those in work, the Government reveals exactly how they are booting more people into the poverty trap (that they abolished the definition of last week). – People claiming tax credits used to be able to earn £6480 a year before their tax credits started tapering away. Now that is reduced to £3850. With the new higher taper of 48p in the pound, that’s taking £1262.40 a year out ...
Welfare Queen
A cartoon to commemorate the christening of the laverly Princess Charlotte Gawd-Bless-er-Little-Cotton-Socks ...
‘Partners too’ – illustrations from the partner’s perspective
The partner’s experience is usually overlooked when women miscarry. The Miscarriage Association sought to rectify that, and commissioned these illustrations based on interviews with partners, both men and women. You can see them here with the quotes from those interviews, or you can view them below without captions. Dr Petra Boynton, writing in the Lancet, explores how the emotional impact of miscarriage on both parents is often ignored: ‘The very first cartoon Kate drew took me straight back to the darkened room with the sonographer and her “I’m sorry, I can’t see anything” ...
‘Teens too’ – illustrations on teenage miscarriage
Another commission from the Miscarriage Association, this time tackling the stigma, judgement, assumptions and isolation that younger women suffer when they lose a baby ...
Birth: How monkey mama does it
A chapter from Bump The Monkey Mama chapter of Bump, how to make, grow and birth a baby will tell you everything you need to know about how natural birth functions. It is the story of all the good births from all the women throughout history, including countless numbers of your ancestors. It is a comic but it has been peer reviewed by professors of midwifery. Everything you are about to read really happens. Not just about home birth When I market-tested this chapter, some readers assumed it was about ...
NHS plc
They privatised the NHS. Did anyone notice yet? You can buy a printable poster version of this cartoon here ...
Let’s play Welfare Reform!
What lucky prize will you win? Higher childcare costs? Housing benefit caps? Payday loans? Workfare? Scum on down! Let’s play… ...
The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
It’s here. It’s scary. My latest cartoon for The Spark magazine says it all ...
Fracking hell…
Imagine if our climate was destabilised by greenhouse gas emissions and severe weather events erupted all over the world, trashing crops, wiping out wildlife and killing people… Imagine the international response was nothing more meaningful than a promise to maybe keep discussing the problem, generating more hot air… And the national response was to bury our collective heads in the Marcellus Shale Rock that lies deep beneath our green and pleasant land.. Discover more about fracking here ...
Thatcherism
I don’t remember this happening before. When a UK politician dies, I don’t remember them being elevated to the status of royalty. I don’t ever recall a £10million public funeral with full military honours , Parliament being recalled for an entire day of eulogising and a nice fat expenses cheque for each MP. When Winston Churchill died, Parliament dedicated half an hour to speeches in his memory, then they got back on with the job of running the country. This. Is. Not. Normal. And what is particularly abnormal is, that ...
Carbon Supermarket
Read my companion comic to Funny Weather. The international response to climate change can be summed up in two broad strands. Firstly, there’s all the things we should be doing, but aren’t. Then, there’s all the stuff we are doing, but shouldn’t be. Carbon trading falls into this second category, and this cartoon explains why. Copies of the comic were taken to the COP 15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. I hope it helped ...
Funny Weather We’re Having at the Moment…
Here is the first chapter of Funny Weather: Everything you Didn’t Want to Know About Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out, possibly the best book ever written on climate change (and certainly the funniest). You can read it for free. Just click the picture ...
Big Brother
Iris scans… DNA databases… the National Identity Register… facial recognition systems… numberplate tracking… Isn’t the Surveillance State getting a bit out of hand? Kids in prison… curfews… ASBOs handed out for doing things that aren’t against the law… people stuck in house arrest without charge or trial… refugees deported for their beliefs, facing torture and execution… anti-terrorism legislation being used to target pacifists… It’s all a bit worrying, if you think about it… A race to the bottom in public standards… tabloid editors dictating the political agenda… The War on ...
…this isn’t news.
I spent eleven days with the International Solidarity Movement in Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2002. I am not about to claim that this gave me a thorough knowledge of the conflict there, but it did give me a snapshot of life in an occupied nation. The bureaucratic complexity of Palestinian oppression by the Israeli state really hit home. As always, it’s about the stories that don’t make the news… Osama lives in East Jerusalem, or rather, he doesn’t… …He was born in East Jerusalem, and grew up here… ...
What would you do for money?
A poem and artoon about global capitalism. This cartoon originally appeared in Copse: the Cartoon Book of Tree Protesting. While we’re on the subject, what would I do for money? This ...
My first cartoon
This is my first proper cartoon. Isn’t it cute? Look, I did the lettering with brush tippex, before tippex pens were heard of, or photoshop. I got this printed as a postcard and put it in some shops in Brighton. Some time in the following century, my sister saw this postcard on an Australian lesbian TV drama, propped against the mirror of one of the characters. This means that I have achieved World Cartoon Domination, and can now die happy ...
Website Design
Thanks to Lisa Cole at Naked Website, my marvellous webmistress. You too can employ her, tho I think she has a waiting list, because she is great. (Btw, she didn’t write this post, I did.) ...
The Diggers of George Hill
I used to clean houses on St George’s Hill. It has changed somewhat since Gerrard Winstanley’s time ...