Mariko Tamaki

Mariko Tamaki is one of the most decorated storytellers working in comics today — a Canadian writer whose tender, sharply funny portraits of queer teenagers have won her three Eisner Awards for Best Writer, a Caldecott Honor, two Michael L. Printz Honors, and a shelf full of Ignatz, Harvey, and Joe Shuster Awards. Perfect for fans of Heartstopper, the emotional interiority of Blankets, and any comic that treats being sixteen like the life-or-death drama it really is.

Tamaki’s career began on the page and on the stage. Born in Toronto in 1975 to a Japanese Canadian father and a Jewish Canadian mother, she worked as a performance artist before publishing her debut novel, Cover Me, in 2000. Comics came into focus in 2008 with Skim, a spare, devastating graphic novel about a Toronto high school girl navigating a crush on her female teacher — drawn by her cousin Jillian Tamaki. The book swept Canada’s comics awards, winning the Ignatz, Joe Shuster, and Doug Wright Awards and landing on the Governor General’s Award shortlist, and it announced Tamaki’s signature subject: the messy, magnificent interior lives of teenage girls.

The Tamaki cousins struck again in 2014 with This One Summer, a New York Times bestseller about two girls on the cusp of adolescence at a lakeside cottage town. It won the 2015 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album, earned a Caldecott Honor and a Printz Honor from the American Library Association, and was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book — a triple crown that made it one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of its decade.

Tamaki stepped into mainstream superhero comics in 2016, and she’s been quietly making history there ever since. She has written acclaimed runs for both DC and Marvel — including a celebrated run on Wonder Woman (#759–769, collected as Lords & Liars) with Mikel Janín and Steve Pugh — while her creator-owned work kept earning awards. Her other mainstream credits include Marvel’s X-23 and a 12-issue run on Dark Horse’s Tomb Raider alongside artist Phillip Sevy.

Her 2019 collaboration with artist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, became her defining work — a queer coming-of-age story about a toxic relationship that won the 2019 Ignatz and Harvey Awards, the 2020 Walter Award, and the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Publication for Teens, while Tamaki herself took home the Eisner for Best Writer.

In 2023, the Tamaki cousins reunited for Roaming, a gorgeous Drawn & Quarterly portrait of three college students drifting through a weekend in New York City. It swept the 2024 Eisners — Best Graphic Album and Best Writer — plus the Ignatz and Ringo Awards, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. And in 2025 she delivered This Place Kills Me, a boarding-school murder mystery with Nicole Goux that earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, BookPage, and Quill & Quire — and won the 2026 Eisner Award for Best Writer and Best Publication for Teens.

Follow Tamaki on Twitter and Instagram for updates on new projects, and browse her writing and appearances on her website.