Manga Artist Extraordinaire and TEDFellow Sara Mayhew featured in respected journal "Ottawa Citizen"
(photo credit: Joshua Wanyama)
The accolades about the TEDFellows just keep on coming: Bright Simon's talk made the TED Greatest Hits, Erik Hersman is getting a WeMedia Gamechanger Award, and Mohammad Tauheed was recently featured in the respected Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Today, one of our extraordinary artists, Manga genius Sara Mayhew is featured in the Ottawa Citizen.Unless you're a fan of manga, chances are you've never heard of Sara Mayhew, who just got back from a worldwide conference of ideas in California.Mayhew is no big-city jetsetter. She's a 24-year-old comic-book artist who lives in Kirkland Lake, in northern Ontario. She divides her time between freelance illustration and creating manga -- a style of comics that originated in Japan.
She and Bill Gates have a few things in common. They both spoke at the 2009 TED Conference, and they're both unrepentant geeks. Geeks change the world.
You can see Mayhew's art at saramayhew.com. She's working on a series called Legend of the Ztarr, about a "violet-eyed forest girl from the planet Teri" who is expected to overthrow the emperor of the universe.
"What I want to include in my work are messages about critical thinking and skepticism. I'm a huge fan of anything to do with science, even though I have no training in science or math."
Mayhew says when she was a girl, she didn't have many female role models in science. She credits Star Trek: The Next Generation with providing an epiphany: well-rounded, intelligent people of both genders could be cool. They could even be main characters. (She writes a blog called There are Four Lights, a reference that will be telling to fans of Jean-Luc Picard.)
"I find in a lot of science fiction on TV or in comic books that the scientist is either the villain or the weird nerd that the main character uses when it's convenient... In my work, I try to create characters who are good role models for people to explore science and learning."
- Four Lights blog (www.fourlights.saramayhew.com)
- Legend of the Ztarr can be read over at www.legendoftheztarr.com.
- Her older
series, Secrets of Sorcerers, can be read online at www.secretsofsorcerers.com,
- A work in progress, Love Pet (www.lovepet.ztarr.net).
