Seek You is a work of graphic nonfiction that defies labels. (“The comic strip feature documentary? The long-form graphic essay?” asks Rusty Brown.) In it, Kristen Radtke draws on cultural and scientific history as well as personal narrative to investigate loneliness and longing. What makes us engage with one another? What makes us turn away? What are the risks of our deepening isolation?
In addition to Seek You, Ms. Radtke is the author of Imagine Wanting Only This. Her comics and writing have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and many others.
Because our failure to genuinely listen and respond to others has profound political as well as public health consequences—loneliness is projected to become an epidemic by 2030, Radtke informs us.
“We just find more and more reasons to isolate ourselves from one another. … It’s so counterintuitive to who human beings are and what we need to survive,” says Kristen Radtke on the Living Writers podcast. Listen to the whole three-question interview here.