Tessa Hulls (born 1984) is an American non-fiction writer, and graphic memoirist. She is notable for having won the Pulitzer Prize as well as other awards for her graphic novel, a memoir, Feeding Ghosts.
Tessa Hulls | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1984 (age 41–42) Northern California, United States |
| Occupation | Graphic memoirist |
| Notable works | Feeding Ghosts (2024) |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography |
| Relatives | Chris Hulls (brother) |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
Life and work
editHulls was born in 1984 in a small town near the coast of Northern California. Her father was a British immigrant and her mother was of Chinese origin. Her brother is Chris Hulls.[1]
Hull’s book Feeding Ghosts follows, in words and picture panels, three generations of Hull’s family. Sun Yi, Hull’s maternal grandmother, was a journalist in Shanghai, China in the time of Mao-Tse Tung. After years of harassment by the Communist party, Sun Yi fled to Hong Kong in 1957 with her daughter Rose. There she published a memoir in Mandarin about her experience, had a mental breakdown, and spent the rest of her life in and out of mental hospitals. Sun Yi’s daughter Rose, Hull’s mother, had an unhappy time in a colonial boarding school before emigrating to Minnesota, USA in 1970. Later on, Rose brought her mother Sun Yi to live with her in the USA. Not enjoying the intense co-dependency of her mother and grandmother, Hulls left home and travelled extensively.[2]
Feeding Ghosts took ten years to research and to write, time which included learning some Chinese and getting her grandmother’s memoir translated into English. In the memoir, Hull pieces together one hundred years of family history, and three generations of trauma.[3][4][5][6]
Hulls is also a long-distance solo cyclist and explorer of the outdoors,[7] and has presented illustrated lectures entitled 'She Traveled Solo: Strong Women of the Early 20th Century'. The lectures were about female explorers and adventurers, like Bessie Coleman, Fannie Quigley, Ada Blackjack, Annie Londonderry, Fanny Bullock Workman, and strongwoman/circus performer Katie Sandwina.[1][8] Hulls has published in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal. Her comics have appeared in The Rumpus, City Arts, and SPARK.[9]
Awards and recognition
editHulls received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and 4 Culture and the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. In 2025, she received the Pulitzer Prize in memoir or autobiography for her debut graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Memoir and the Libby Award for best graphic novel. Hulls was a Kirkus nonfiction prize finalist, longlisted for the Carnegie medal, and shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest book award. Feeding Ghosts was named one of the best books of the year in 2025 by Time, Forbes, NPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and the Chicago Public Library.[9]
References
edit- 1 2 "Tessa Hulls". lambiek.net. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ "The Contours of Negative Space: On Tessa Hulls's "Feeding Ghosts"". Los Angeles Review of Books. 7 March 2024. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ Ito, Robert (1 March 2024). "A Writer's To-Do List: Learn History. Learn Chinese. Learn to Draw Comics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ "Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ Hulls, Tessa (2025). Feeding Ghosts. Picador. ISBN 978-0-374-60165-2.
- ↑ Roch, Mattea (8 September 2025). "Tessa Hulls won a Pulitzer Prize for her first book. It'll also be her last". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ Eggers, Rachel (5 February 2026). "The Explorer: Tessa Hulls". Seattle magazine. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- ↑ Rems, Emily (26 January 2026). "Ghost Story: an interview with Tessa Hulls on her Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir". The Comics Journal. Retrieved 3 June 2026.
- 1 2 "Tessa Hulls | The Pulitzer Prizes". pulitzer.org. Retrieved 3 June 2026.