Janet Hamlin Uncovers the Humanity Hidden Within
Guantanamo's Walls in Sketching Guantanamo


(not final cover art)

Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals, 2006-2013
by Janet Hamlin

In the wake of 9-11, alleged terrorists were housed on a U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. While there, these terrorist suspects were confined in "indefinite detention," off the American mainland, unaccountable to the U.S. judicial system, nameless and faceless to the world. At the military trials of Guantanamo, which started in 2006, no photographs were permitted in the courtroom. Only one person was allowed to cover the trials, not with a camera but with her pencils and pastels. Janet Hamlin has been the only sketch artist covering the trials from 2006 to the present, granting the suspects humanity and dignity while allowing the world to see the process through an unapologetic lens.

Sketching Guantanamo is both a collection of her most potent and revealing sketches drawn during this period, as well a chronicle of her experience at Guantanamo.

Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth states, "Janet's courtroom sketches and commentary comprises a significant moral document, of interest to every citizen who cares about what the United States government is doing in his and her name. Sketching Guantanamo helps bring out of the shadows and into the light of public scrutiny these extra-judicial trials."

Before entering the viewing booth at the back of court, Hamlin is subjected to daily thorough searches, wanding, and metal detecting in three separate checkpoints. All a reader needs to do is open the book to be transported to the infamous base. Hamlin's drawings and accompanying text provide a rare insight into the military courts of Guantanamo; they've appeared on ABC News and Comedy Central's The Daily Show, and were recently featured in The Colbert Report's story on censorship of the trials. With nearly 150 drawings, the book will also include photographs of the surrounding facilities to enhance Hamlin's illustrations and commentary. It also includes a foreward by Robert F. Kennedy Johnson Award winner Carol Rosenberg, a member of a reporting team that won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Janet Hamlin graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design and lives in New York. Her clients include Time Warner, Universal Studios, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, IBM, HarperCollins and Associated Press to name a few. 

176-page full-color 11" x 8.5" hardcover
Cover price: $28.99
ISBN: 978-1-60699-691-1
Published by Fantagraphics Books

In-store date: October 2013 (subject to change)