Hello!
I’m Edith Zimmerman, and Drawing Links is a comics newsletter with short illustrated stories about my life. I drew a lot as a kid and then found it again when I stopped drinking. What started as a pre-work morning ritual (drawing in a journal) has become my main occupation. In 2019 I quit my job to start this newsletter! Before that, I shared comics on Instagram. (And I still do.) Update: In August 2022, I turned off the paid version of this newsletter, but the free version is still going out sporadically. I also sell greeting cards on Etsy.
More about me: In 2010 I started the women’s site The Hairpin, and I’ve written for The Cut, the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, GQ, and The Awl. I founded the comics section Spiralbound (which ran from 2017 - 2020), and I illustrate the recovery newsletter The Small Bow. I live in upstate New York, and I’m from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Some popular past installments of Drawing Links include Snake, Missed Connection, and Mermaid. (And, for paying subscribers, The Compass.) I am partial to the fictional Another Door sequence!
How do you make these comics?
I draw with pen, marker, and colored pencil on paper. Then I scan the pages into my computer, reformat them in Preview, and send them out as one or more long JPGs or PNGs. I gave an interview with Uses This that goes into more detail on this process.
Has this newsletter ever been recommended anywhere cool??
Funny you should ask... Drawing Links has been mentioned in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Kottke, InsideHook, Gothamist, and Metafilter, as well as in a number of great newsletters, like Laura Olin’s, Ann Friedman’s, and A Thing or Two With Claire and Erica. And possibly … yours? Please feel free to link or excerpt anything you see here.
Have you given interviews about this newsletter?
I have! In conversation with Robert Cottrell of The Browser (on YouTube), in Don Winn’s blog, and on Uses This.
What other newsletters do you like?
I linked to a bunch of them at the end of this post, because the list here was getting too long. We are in a golden age of newsletters!
Thank you for reading!
