Tessa Hulls' debut as an author is the sprawling graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts, a story of her own family, of survival and madness and love, seen through the lens of three generations of women and covering nearly a century of Chinese history.
Tessa is an illustrator, painter, researcher, historian, chef and adventurer. Her grandmother and mother fled Shanghai for Hong Kong during Mao's Great Leap Forward, at great cost to the family and her grandmother's health. Sixty years later, Tessa brings her mother back to China on a mission to find answers to nagging questions and seek resolution to generational traumas.
Tessa is appearing at the 2024 Portland Book Festival on November 2nd at 2:15pm, in the Portland Art Museum’s Miller Gallery alongside Jessica Hoppe and Lupita Aquino.
An expanded web-only version of this episode, featuring additional content, is available at this link.