The Academic Hour

by Keren Katz

"It’s safe to say that children in grade school can’t illustrate images this impressive, but still, these Keren Katz renderings have a certain unrefined quality to them that’s evocative of kids’ drawings. This is, of course, a conscious design choice as Katz’s style stands out immensely amidst a sea of computer-generated artistry. Her penchant for leaving things not perfectly colored, her exaggerated human proportions and the overall whimsy of the scenes she depicts are things that make her work endlessly interesting to examine." - Trendhunter

The Academic Hour charts the romance between Poethel, a disgraced architecture professor, and his student, Liana. Told in a series of surreal, vibrant vignettes, and set in a fantastic, logic-defying college of shifting rooms and secret performance spaces, The Academic Hour affirms how an intense, fledgling relationship can ignite the impulse for storytelling with unbridled, ferocious creative energy.

Keren Katz is an Israeli-born cartoonist, writer, and illustrator. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts’s MFA Illustration Program, she is also “the illustrating half of The Katz Sisters duo. She is also the half that is not fictitious.” Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Einayim Magazine for Children, Achbar Ha-Ir, Ha-Af, Ha-Pinkas, Carrier Pigeon, Linen Ovens Comics Poetry Anthology, Maayan Poetry Magazine, and by Locust Moon Comics and Seven Stories Press.