Jessica Abel

Jessica Abel is a graphic novelist, author, business coach for creatives, and the founder of Autonomous Creative. Jessica is committed to equipping midcareer creative professionals to thrive financially without compromising their artistic vision. Abel rejects the notion that creative fields are necessarily precarious and instead works to put the tools of making real money in less time—without creative compromise—into the hands of the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who need them.

Since 1992, Abel has published with indie houses, commercial publishers, magazines, newspapers, and as a self-publisher. Among her works is *Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio* (Penguin Random House), and the graphic novel *La Perdida* (Penguin Random House, winner of the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award). She has been teaching at the university level for 25 years, and is currently chair of the Illustration Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been reviewed and quoted in The Guardian, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and Entertainment Weekly, and, even better, in hundreds of personal blogs and Instagram stories by people who’ve utilized her work to take control of their creative lives.

Once called “terrifying” by an intern, Abel has been trying for years to tone it down, but still claims Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson must have learned the eyebrow thing from her.