JB Brager is a cartoonist and teacher living on Lenape land in Brooklyn, NY. They have published comics most recently at The Nib, Jewish Currents, and World War 3 Illustrated, and are currently the first year course director at Rutgers University Douglass Residential College. Their first book-length project, Heavyweight, is forthcoming from William Morrow in 2023.
Project Description: Heavyweight is a graphic memoir that explores the ways we transform family stories into personal mythology and collective memory. The book moves through JB’s childhood obsession with Holocaust history and adult obsession with German colonialism, the content of their great grandmother’s testimonies, the family archive, and the mystery of their great grandfather Erich Levi, the German heavyweight boxing champion, and his hold on JB, as they come to an understanding of themself as a white, trans Jewish person in the present historical and political moment.