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Christi Furnas is a queer cartoonist, illustrator, oil painter, and disability rights advocate. She has exhibited in galleries across Minnesota and in New York City. Christi's career includes over ten years of arts administration, teaching art workshops, and numerous speaking engagements. With a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant Christi created the mini-comic, Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia, which she has since developed into a full-length graphic novel. The comic's protagonist, Fox Foxerson currently has an advice column in Dispatch, a Twin Cities publication covering arts and culture. Christi lives with her partner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is her debut graphic novel.
"April 2024 Reads for the Rest of Us - Ms. Magazine ""Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups... Here are 25 fantastic books releasing in April that I recommend you dig into.... There are stunning debuts, masterful historical fiction, kaleidoscopic short stories, thoughtful manifestas, moving memoirs, groundbreaking nonfiction, and so much more.... Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures on Schizophrenia--Based on her own experiences, Christi Furnas’s debut graphic novel tackles a tough subject with humor and simplicity. Through sweet line drawings of animal friends, Furnas helps to alleviate the stigma of a schizophrenia diagnosis, reinforces the validity of being okay (or not), and illustrates the importance of continually 'working on it.'” —Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine ”Furnas skewers the mental healthcare system in her sharp-edged graphic novel debut. . . This surreal work reflects the disorientation of mental breakdown.”—Publishers Weekly “A work of blunt brilliance. With disarming humor and irresistible charm, Fox Foxerson calls everything exactly what it is. I highly recommend this funny and loving book.” —Amy Kurzweil, author of Artificial: A Love Story “Energetic, surprising, and often funny, the simple line drawings belie the complexity of one person’s fascinating quest for healing. An important addition to the field of graphic medicine.” —Elizabeth Trembley, author of Look Again: A Memoir “A cast of creatively chosen animal avatars carries us through this story while effectively critiquing the sometimes arbitrary and confusing mental health treatment establishment.” —MK Czerwiec, author of Taking Turns ""Furnas skewers the mental healthcare system in her sharp-edged graphic novel debut, which interweaves candid autobiographical moments into the story of aspiring artist Fox Foxerson and a bevy of other anthropomorphic critters. . . . Emotional turmoil surfaces in the ample white space around simple black-and-white doodled art--in one paranoid episode, the clawed hands of a spectral figure grasp for Fox's spiraling mind. Following multiple suicide attempts, Fox receives a schizophrenia diagnosis that sets in motion a frenetic journey through a morass of hospitals and psychiatric facilities where unsympathetic physicians are cleverly illustrated as interchangeable sock puppets with creepy button eyes. Chapters tend to end abruptly, as does the book, absent of resolution. This surreal work reflects the disorientation of mental breakdown."" —Publishers Weekly"
