Zeke Peña is a Xicano cartoonist and illustrator who, for most of his professional life, has focused on the lives and stories of El Paso, TX, where he grew up and lived for decades. A self-taught artist with an undergraduate degree in art history from UT Austin, he has built a rich portfolio of varied works that, as he describes them, are “a mash-up of political cartoons, border rasquache and hip-hop culture.”

He has illustrated several award-winning books, including “My Papi Drives a Motorcycle,” which The New York Times called a best children’s book of 2019, and “Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide,” a Boston Globe–Horn Book Nonfiction Award Winner and a Moonbeam Children’s Book Gold Award Winner. Both were written by Isabel Quintero, who has become a close collaborator. In 2023 he illustrated bestselling author Jason Reynolds’ “Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel.” His editorial work has appeared in a wide array of publications, including VICE, ProPublica and Latino USA.

Here he describes the evolution of his ambitious journalistic endeavor, “The River Project,” about the increasingly politicized Rio Grande and all it represents. He also discusses how he’s adapted to the latest moral book-banning crusade and how he wishes for publishers to honor their writers’ and illustrators’ collaborative spirits. 

https://www.zpvisual.com/

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