Book Talk: "Precious Rubbish" by Kayla E

Mexican American graphic designer and comics creator Kayla E. will visit Ohio State to deliver a public talk at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library. The author and artist will discuss her recently published graphic novel Precious Rubbish (2025), which explores her childhood trauma in Texas. Using a mid-century comics aesthetic, Kayla E addresses sensitive issues such as sexual violence, incest and addiction. This presentation will be followed by a Q & A session with the audience. 

Precious Rubbish won the 2025 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel, received an Honorable Mention in the 2025 International Latino Book Awards and earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. 

Kayla E. is a Texas–born artist of Mexican-American descent. She earned her B.A. from Harvard University and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and lives in a small town in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs.

In 2026, Kayla E. received a Creative Capital Award for her next graphic memoir, I Will Give You Rest. Her work has earned two Eisner Award nominations and appears in The New Yorker, NOW (the New Comics Anthology), Ecotone, and The Comics Journal, among others. Her work has been exhibited by museums and galleries including the North Carolina Museum of Art, Culture Hole, Central Server Works / Marian Cramer Projects, Marfa Invitational and the Goss-Michael Foundation / Hignite Projects. She served as editor-in-chief of the Whiting Award–winning literary magazine Nat. Brut for nine years and co-edited a collection of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy comic strips (Fantagraphics, 2026).

Co-sponsored by the FREE Center, the Department of Design, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library, the Latinx Studies Program and the Humanities Institute.