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Join Özge Samancı for a talk on Evil Eyes Sea, her semi-autobiographical graphic novel set in 1990s Istanbul during a volatile election season. Hailed as one of The Guardian’s Best Graphic Novels of 2024 and winner of the 2025 Cartoonist Studio Prize, the book is now slated for translation into French and German. Blending humor, suspense, magical realism, and a murder mystery, Evil Eyes Sea explores the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey. As the United States faces its own political fractures, the novel offers a timely and resonant reflection on democracy, power, and resistance, told through the lens of youth, friendship, and absurdity.

Özge Samancı is an associate professor at Northwestern University’s School of Communication, a media artist, and a graphic novelist. Her interdisciplinary practice spans interactive and installation art, creative coding, fabrication, and emerging technologies, often engaging with environmental and scientific themes. Her interactive works have been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Museu do Amanhã, Siggraph Art Gallery, FILE Festival, and the WRO Media Art Biennial. She is also the author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Dare to Disappoint (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015), translated into six languages. Her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate Magazine. Samancı is the recipient of the Berlin Prize and Holtzbrinck Visual Arts Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin (2017), the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Alumni Award from Georgia Tech (2020), and the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship in Media Arts (2023).

Co-sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Department of Comparative Literature, artsCatalyst, and the Middle Eastern Studies Forum, and the Program on Turkey. 

RSVP .