Joe Sacco is a graphic novelist who described himself in Time as "a really good cartoonist who does journalism." His graphic works--sometimes called "cartoon journalism"--tell in an inventive manner factual stories taken from his own experiences. His prize-winning book Palestine is a two-volume set chronicling the decades-long conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, while Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995 is a look at the alleged atrocities of the war in Bosnia. According to a critic for Publishers Weekly, Sacco's "commentary is never less than intelligent and generally quite brilliant."

Sacco was born in Malta in 1960, and spent much of his childhood in Australia before arriving in the United States. He studied journalism at the University of Oregon, and after graduating in 1981, held editorial positions in Los Angeles and Portland and worked on a comic book titled Centrifugal Bumble Puppy. In the late...