Edel Rodriguez

Harman Writer-In-Residence, Spring 2025

The Spring 2025 Harman Writer-In-Residence will be illustrator Edel Rodriguez.

Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist and author of the internationally acclaimed graphic memoir Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, named Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Kirkus Reviews.  The memoir tells the unforgettable, riveting reality of coming to America on the Mariel boatlift and his family’s subsequent displacement in exile. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time Magazine, his illustrations are powerful, creative, and fearless. He is the recipient of multiple honors, including the American Library Association’s Pura Belpré Honor, a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and Pop Culture’s Classroom’s Excellence in Graphic Literature Award. He has published four children’s books, most recently The Mango Tree / Le Mata De Mango (2024).

An excerpt from The New York Times article, “Edel Rodriguez Isn’t Afraid to Live With the Consequences”

The hardest thing about making political art, says Edel Rodriguez, isn’t technique but judgment: knowing just where to stick the “tip of the knife” so that audiences feel provoked without crying foul.

He isn’t always sure he’s hit the mark. At times while drawing what would become some of the most iconic images of the Donald Trump presidency — magazine covers of a faceless orange figure screaming into the void, decapitating Lady Liberty or draped in a K.K.K. hood — Rodriguez wondered whether he was being unfair. At least, for a moment.

“Occasionally, I thought, ‘This might be too much,’” Rodriguez said recently over Zoom from his home studio in New Jersey. “And then three weeks later he does something, and I figure out: ‘Oh, OK, that wasn’t so crazy.’”