Michael Sloan

Michael Sloan is an American freelance illustrator. In 2018, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning along with Jake Halpern, for their comic Welcome to the New World. In 2020, Halpern and Sloan published a graphic novel under the same name.

Michael Sloan is also a musician, composer, and recording artist. He has produced over 280 albums in a wide variety of musical styles, mostly instrumental and guitar-based. Many of his albums are named after people and places that have had a profound influence on his work. He designs and creates the artwork for his album covers.

Many of Michael’s albums (i.e. “The Odyssey,” “The Trojan War,” “The Bayeux Tapestry”) are musical narratives, and are often operatic. There is a parallel between these albums and his graphic narrative work such as the “Separation” comic, and his “Zen of Nimbus” graphic novels.

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, Michael worked as a printmaker in Paris and Venice before moving to New York City where he began his career as an illustrator. His first published assignment appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page. He has taught illustration at the University of Connecticut and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Michael spent a year with his family living and working in Hong Kong, where he created a series of paintings of traditional street markets. He has shown these paintings in solo exhibits in the United States and Hong Kong.

Sloan and author Jake Halpern created Welcome to the New World, a comic strip series for the New York Times about a refugee family who fled the civil war in Syria to make a new life in America. Michael and Jake were awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning for Welcome to the New World.

Sloan and Halpern continued their collaboration in 2025 with the creation of Separation, a comic strip series for the New York Times about a Honduran family living in New York City that is seeking asylum and faces the risk of deportation.

He is a member of PEN America, the Lute Society of America, and the Society of Illustrators.

Illustrations

Zen of Nimbus The Heresy of Nimbus (2006) The Redemption of Nimbus Welcome to the New World. (2020)

Music: albums (selection)

Baldwin (2024) Matisse (2024) Michelle Obama (2024) Steinbeck (2024)