Heartcore: To the Heart of It [book launch]

How does falling in love really work—and who (or what) is behind it?Is love written in our DNA, shaped by the relationships we witnessed growing up, or is it an unpredictable force entirely outside our control? Join us for a provocative conversation exploring gender, identity, and intimacy through the lens of comics autobiography. This Bookend Event of the Brooklyn Book Festival features graphic novelists Štěpánka Jislová and Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos in a discussion moderated by scholar and critic Tahneer Oksman.

This evening also celebrates the English-language launch of Heartcore(Graphic Mundi, 2025), the acclaimed new graphic novel by Štěpánka Jislová, originally published in Czech as Srdcovka (Paseka, 2023).

In Heartcore, Jislová takes readers on a raw and intimate journey through memories and relationships, navigating the messy intersections of love, loneliness, gender expectations, and sexual violence. From childhood to adulthood, through college parties, online dating, hookup culture, and toxic entanglements, her characters struggle to understand what it means to connect, to desire, and to be seen. The result is a powerful reflection on contemporary relationships and identity.

The book is Štěpánka Jislová’s most ambitious work to date—a 200-page landmark in Czech comics that earned her the Muriel Awards for Best Graphic Novel and Best Script, as well as the Czech Comics Academy Prize.

Štěpánka Jislová is currently touring the U.S. Northeast in support of Heartcore, with stops at The Boston Comics Art Foundation, a guest lecture at Harvard University, and appearances at the Czech Embassy in Washington D.C. and the Small Press Expo in Rockville, Maryland. In New York, she will meet with young creatives at LaGuardia High School before presenting her work at this official launch event hosted by the Czech Center New York.

Štěpánka Jislová (b. 1992) is a Czech illustrator and comics artist based in Prague. She is a graduate of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Pilsen. Her short comics have appeared in numerous Czech publications, including Aargh!, Caves, Bubblegun, and Xerox, as well as international anthologies such as Bobla, Dirty Diamonds, and CBA. In 2013, her comic The Tree won first prize at the CZ.KOMIKS competition. She was a participant in the 2015 comics symposium The Superheroes of the Eastern Blocand was later awarded a residency at Wilkinson College in California as part of the Getting to Know Europe program. Jislová is the (co-)author of seven comics books. Her latest work, Heartcore, is an intimate autobiographical graphic novel about love, relationships, and the recurring toxic patterns that shape our emotional lives.

Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos is a writer and comics creator whose work spans prose, graphic storytelling, zines, and artist books. Her stories have appeared in acclaimed anthologies and earned recognition from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and the Chautauqua Institution. Her debut collection, Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back (2024), blends sci-fi, sensuality, and literary realism across prose, comics, and photography. Winner of the 2022 Chautauqua Janus Prize for her story “Jean,”Pitsirilos explores themes of culture, gender, and legacy—often through the lens of diasporic Puerto Rican and Grecian identities. She is a board member of Graphic Mundi and lives in New York City with her family.

Tahneer Oksman is a writer, scholar, and Associate Professor at Marymount Manhattan College, where she teaches writing, literature, comics, and journalism. Her work focuses on memoir, comics and visual culture, feminist theory, and Jewish American literature. She is the author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs and co-editor of several volumes, including Feminists Reclaim Mentorship and The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell. A frequent public speaker and contributor to outlets like NPR, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, she also created the Audible OriginalWhy Memoir Matters. She lives in Brooklyn.