Sarah “Shay” Mirk (they/she) is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. For six years, Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, where projects she worked on won both Eisner and Ignatz awards. They are the author of several books, including Guantanamo Voices, an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay prison, which Kirkus called “extraordinary… an eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America’s worst trespasses.” They are a zine-maker and illustrator whose comics have been featured in The New Yorker, Bitch, and NPR. Her book on the craft of making nonfiction comics, Making Nonfiction Comics: A Field Guide to Graphic Journalism (co-written with Eleri Harris), will debut from Abrams ComicsArts in 2025. In 2024, Shay was the Applied Cartooning Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.

Mirk began her career as a reporter for alternative weekly newspapers The Stranger and The Portland Mercury, where she covered political issues and numerous colorful characters. From 2013 to 2017, she worked as the online editor of national feminism and pop culture nonprofit Bitch Media. In that role, she edited and published critical work from dozens of writers and hosted the engaging feminist podcast Popaganda. From 2019-2023, she worked as a digital engagement producer at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. She co-wrote the investigative comics series In/Vulnerable, illustrated by Thi Bui, which won an RFK Human Rights Award for Journalism in 2021. She identifies as white, nonbinary, and queer. In her free time, she befriends strangers’ dogs.