Amy Kurzweil

Amy Kurzweil is a New Yorker cartoonist, writer, and teacher whose work explores memory, identity, technology, and AI. Her TED Talk, “Time Traveling With AI to Connect With Lost Loved Ones,” has been viewed over half a million times.

She is the author of two award-winning graphic memoirs. Her most recent work, Artificial: A Love Story, was named a best book of 2023 by NPR, Kirkus and The New Yorker. It tells the story of Amy’s experience spending many years engrossed in the archives of her grandfather, whom she never met, in order to help build a (pre-ChatGPT) large language model that engaged with his writing. With her signature humanity and humor, as well as her gorgeous handmade drawings, Amy offers a look into three generations of her family’s history. It’s a unique exploration into how we relate to one another, how technology can enable our creativity, and what a meaningful life really looks like. In a starred review, Library Journal writes that “Kurzweil’s highly recommended memoir is unlike any other. It will leave readers with much to contemplate.”

Her first graphic memoir, Flying Couch, was a New York Times ‘Editor’s Choice’ and a Kirkus best nonfiction book of 2016. In it, Amy weaves her own coming-of-age story with the narrative of her mother, a psychologist, and her grandmother, a World War II survivor who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto at age 13. In a starred review, Kirkus calls it “a debut that enriches and extends the potential of graphic narrative,” while LitReactor praises it as “wry and deeply moving.”

Amy is the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s 2024 “Best Cartoon” Award for her work with The LA Times. She’s been nominated for Reuben and Ignatz Awards for “Technofeelia,” her four part series with The Believer Magazine about human adventures in technology. She was a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, a Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow, a Yaddo Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Her comics and graphic essays have also been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Verge, Wired, and many other places. She has taught writing and comics at the Parsons School of Design in New York City, The Fashion Institute of Technology, Center for Talented Youth, Interlochen Center for the Arts, in New York City Public Schools, and in many other venues.