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Emil Wilson is an award-winning art director, illustrator, and artist whose creative work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, as well as on NPR, the Oscars, and during the Super Bowl. He is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies and lives in San Francisco. The Nightingales (Avid Reader Press, August 4, 2026) is his first book, a graphic novel about compassion, family, and the unexpected ways one person's life can alter another's.
Handsell readers your book in about 30 words:
Based on a true story, The Nightingales is a graphic novel set in 1985 about a life-changing friendship between a teenage girl and the dying stranger who moves into her family's home.
On your nightstand now:
Names and Faces by Leise Hook, a graphic memoir-in-essays about growing up mixed race. Hook is a master of visual metaphor and a wonderful writer to boot.
Favorite book when you were a child:
As if there was one! My parents believed in two things: they loved libraries, and if I wanted to read something, they didn't censor it (though that only applied to books). Around eight or nine, I decided to read all the Newbery Award winners--Esther Hoskins Forbes's Johnny Tremain, Elizabeth Borton de Treviño's I, Juan de Pareja, Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins, and William H. Armstrong's Sounder were especially memorable. Then my mother brought home a copy of The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, and I read it cover to cover twice. After that, I graduated to books that were probably far too adult for me: Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, Alex Haley's Roots, anything by James Michener. It felt like a kind of coming-of-age, and I'm grateful my parents trusted that I'd be okay.
Ironically, I didn't read a graphic novel--or even really a comic book--until I was well into my 50s. I'd spent my career as an advertising creative director and had been telling stories visually for years. But when I decided I wanted to tell my own, I knew drawing and design had to be part of them. So I quit my job and enrolled in a comics school, where my classmates were half my age. I had such a great time bringing everything I'd learned in advertising to a completely different medium. In the process, I discovered the form that felt most like me.
Your top five authors:
In terms of cartoonists: Eleanor Davis, Julie Delporte, Youssef Daoudi, Anders Nilsen, Jordan Crane. Prose writers whom I love: Richard Yates, Jonathan Franzen, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, and Lorrie Moore.
Book you've faked reading:
Buddha by Osamu Tezuka, the eight-volume comic-book retelling of the life of Siddhartha Gautama. Although it's considered one of the great achievements in manga, I've only read a couple of the volumes, and I feel incredibly guilty about it.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Tunnels by Rutu Modan. An adventure comic of sorts, with the flavor of a 1930s screwball comedy, where everyone is scheming, bickering, and chasing history underneath Jerusalem.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Building Stories by Chris Ware (plus it's a box with all kinds of amazing objects inside it!).
Book you hid from your parents:
I didn't make a big deal about reading Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, but I can't say I hid it.
Book that changed your life:
Belonging by Nora Krug. In it, the author investigates her German family's relationship to the Third Reich. It was the first graphic memoir that made me feel like anything was possible in visual storytelling. It's extraordinary.
Favorite line from a book:
Any of the crow panels from Cannon by Lee Lai (they're more effective than any written line!).
Five books you'll never part with:
Here by Richard McGuire (so innovative... do not watch the film)
Precious Rubbish by Kayla E. (a difficult read but unforgettably creative)
Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet, translated by Sophie Yanow
Geneviève Castrée: Complete Works 1981-2016 by Geneviève Castrée. Castrée died of pancreatic cancer in 2016 at age 35. Every time I look through this remarkable book, I'm reminded that life is precious and short, and to get off my ass and make art while I'm still able.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Maus by Art Spiegelman. I read it when I was just beginning to explore graphic novels, and while I appreciated it then, I'd love to experience it now after writing something of my own.
Your favorite art tool to create with:
My scanner. It brings everything together and is more valuable to me than any brush or colored pencil. We're in a deeply committed relationship.