Alyssa Bermudez's Blog
September 3, 2025
Festival News, Live Art, and a Preorder Surprise
Hi friends,
I’ve got a busy and exciting September ahead and wanted to share a few updates with you including how to get 25% OFF my new book.
Papercuts Comics Festival in AdelaideNext weekend I will be in Adelaide for the Papercuts Comics Festival! I am honoured to be speaking on the Creators in Conversation panels, where I will be chatting about being a "slashie" and balancing different creative roles in life and work. You can check out the full panel details here.
I will also have a table at the Comics Market where you can find me, say hi, and browse my books and exclusive mini comics. More details here. If you are in Adelaide, please come by. I would love to see you there.
A peek into live drawingRecently, I had the chance to do live drawing for Cystic Fibrosis Tasmania at their fundraising gala. It was such a privilege to capture the energy and glamour of the evening and create guest illustrations in real time. I’ll be back to draw the guests at their Pastel & Pearls Luncheon in November. Here is a little video recap from that special night. And some photos too:
Run Home Preorder Deal!Big news: Run Home is available for preorder in the US. Even better, Barnes & Noble are running a 25% off preorder flash sale, but it is only for two days. If you have been thinking about getting a copy, now is the time.
Use code PREORDER25
👉 Preorder Run Home at Barnes & Noble
I cannot wait for this book to be out in the world, and your support during preorder season makes such a big difference.
The offer is running September 3-5th, exclusively for Rewards and Premium Members.
Thanks, as always, for following along on this creative journey. If you are near Adelaide, hopefully I will see you next weekend. If not, I will keep sharing updates here.
With gratitude as always,
Alyssa
Helpful Links:
August 18, 2025
Excerpt Reveal Time
Sneak peek time! You can read the first several pages of my upcoming graphic memoir RUN HOME 🏃♀️ right here!
The full 304 page experience lands January 27, 2026! (A couple months later in Australia)
Ways you can help get this book out there to readers:
Preorders really do help the book gain traction aka more people can discover this story that I’ve poured my heart into for many years. 🩷
Here are some quick links to preorder it:
Here are some other amazing ways to help this book get to readers:Add it to your Goodreads shelf, request it on Netgalley if you can! 😎
Forward this to a friend who loves graphic novels, memoirs, running. Maybe forward it to a friend who has experienced a big loss.
Ask your local library to preorder it. Have I mentioned it’s a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selected book?
Run Home: A Graphic Memoir published by Roaring Brook Press
Ages 10-14 and UP!
Thank you for being on this journey with me. You can see me and my work a bit more here on Substack, or on Instagram.
June 25, 2025
Wait, where are my pants?
I recently created an eight-page comic for Island Magazine, Issue 174. For now, the full comic is only available in print, but this is the moment that inspired it and some of what sits underneath the surface.
I see little me as a completely different person to who I am now. It’s easier to write about “Little A” as a character, to separate the embarrassments, missteps, and bad judgement calls with grace as a teenager. I know I’ve grown into a different human and have shed multiple skins since then.
Writing about my current self feels far more jarring. I don’t yet have the wider lens of time and space to reflect, but I do trust my instincts. I recognise my present shortcomings with more compassion than I would have ten years ago. I’m still evolving, still experimenting with new ways of getting through each day.
Realising that I’m one of the many women who flew under the ADHD radar until her thirties has helped me make peace with a lot of those flaws. Like so many others, it came with a sense of grief for not knowing sooner, and a tremendous apology to myself for being so demanding and guilt-ridden. Now it all seems so obvious. Are there any neurotypical graphic novelists? I haven’t openly shared that I too received a later-in-life diagnosis. While I had begun to question it before motherhood, it wasn’t until my baby arrived that the true brain glitches became impossible to ignore. I couldn’t mask my way through it anymore.
After becoming a parent, I began doing things that even surprised me with how scattered and spacey I felt. My husband Sam, our 13-month-old daughter, and I travelled to the US and Canada for a month to visit friends and attend a few professional events. While staying in Bellingham, Washington, at my childhood friend’s house, we spontaneously decided to drive to Whistler, BC, for a few days. We packed quickly, trying to prioritise our daughter’s nap schedule as the reason for heading out immediately instead of waiting until evening. Already running on empty from the demands of a jet-lagged, breastfeeding baby, we pushed through the fatigue. Sam was so excited to mountain bike in Whistler that we just went for it, driving about three hours north to start the adventure.
We dropped off our things and headed out to explore. It wasn’t until we returned to the hotel that night that I realised something awful: I had left literally every single one of my belongings at my friend’s place in Washington. While packing, I had focused entirely on organising my daughter’s essentials and completely forgot I also had my own items to gather. I didn’t even bring a single shirt. It’s hard to describe the sinking feeling of disbelief and shock, the humiliating moment of confessing this to my husband, and the extremely embarrassing message I had to send to my friend back in Bellingham.
This story, like so many others, is familiar and relatable to women with ADHD, caregivers trying to recalibrate, and people in general doing their best while juggling too much. This particular moment (and others I shared in this comic) are cringeworthy, but they’re also a gentle reminder to everyone out there to forgive themselves when things fall apart.
Buy Island Magazine's Issue 174
Joshua Santospirito, the Graphic Narratives editor at Island Magazine, wrote this in regards to this piece for Island Magazine: “There are few people foolish enough to attempt the graphic novel: it effectively involves writing a feature-length movie and then following that up with years of drawing, colouring and then drawing some more. Pushing out a doctorate would be better for your social life and posture. Alyssa Bermudez has created two graphic novels in her life now. Chalk the first one up to naivety, but the second? But her stories are all about mistakes. In her comic for this issue you can see the two ever-present components to any classic Bermudez story, the two sides of her wisdom coin. Side one is the generosity and kindness Alyssa has for past versions of herself and her past poor decisions. Side two is how she laughs and laughs and laughs at past versions of herself and her past poor decisions. Plenty to admire.”
I’d love to hear from you in the comments. And if you enjoyed the comic snippets, the full piece appeared in Island magazine, and I would love if you checked it out.
Thanks for being here, and thank you for making space for the messy parts too.
May 17, 2025
Big News: A Book Cover Reveal + A New Comic!
Hi friends,
I’ve been waiting so long to share this with you, and the day is finally here.
The cover for my new graphic memoir Run Home is ready!
This heartrending graphic memoir by Alyssa Bermudez (Big Apple Diaries) is a moving and unforgettable story about inner strength, healing, and finding hope.
It’s 2002, and 14-year-old Alyssa is a freshman at a new high school where she knows NO ONE and the uniforms are hideous! What a disaster...
Even worse? Her parents are forcing her to join the cross-country team. No one needs to run, or sweat, this much!
Over time though, Alyssa actually starts to like running. She’s getting better with practice, and some of the girls on the team are really nice. Alyssa begins to find a steady rhythm with high school, cross country, and her new stepfamily.
But Alyssa’s dad is sick, and she doesn’t know what to do. When the worst thing imaginable happens, Alyssa will need to count on her friends, family, and herself to keep running forward.
Published by Macmillan USA - Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 9781250774309
Page count: 304 - Full-colour illustration - Have I mentioned this took me about 4 years to create?
Age range: 10-14 (and older of course!)
This book has been living in my sketchbooks, brain and heart for years. I will have A LOT more to say about this entire project over the coming months, so stay tuned.
Run Home will be on sale in the US January, 27 2026, but you can pre-order it now in hardcover or paperback. Australia has to wait a bit longer and will see this 304 page book in March 2026. I will have A LOT to say about this book in the coming months, so stay tuned.
You can pre-order Run Home now right here:
Pre-orders actually do make a huge difference in what the publisher will print more of, increasing visibility and demand.
Also! A new comic is coming...I have an original 8-page comic narrative being published in Island Magazine’s Issue #174, debuting in June. It’s called Wait, Where Are My Pants?
This story is something completely new- a peek into my adult life as a messy, creative, occasionally overwhelmed but still trying mother and artist. It’s real, it’s chaotic, and hopefully relatable to anyone who’s ever felt like they’re juggling too many tabs open in their brain.
Here’s a preview of the opening page:
I’m especially excited because this comic is part of Island’s brand new graphic narrative series—and I’m the second feature. It’s a big deal, as comics aren’t often featured in literary magazines. But Island is changing that. You’ll find a new graphic narrative in every issue for the next four years, which is amazing news for lovers of visual storytelling.
If you’re in Australia, you can pre-order or subscribe to Island Magazine Issue #174 here:
If not, you’ll have to wait until September when I share a new formatted version of it.
Thank you so much for being here and following along on this creative journey. Sharing my stories and illustrations with you continues to be one of the best parts of what I do.
More soon,
Alyssa 💫
March 26, 2025
How does time pass in such a shocking way?
How does time pass in such a shocking way? My graphic memoir, Run Home, is coming soon. Okay, when I say “soon,” that’s a bit of a relative concept as it’s about 300 days away—January 26, 2026. But in comparison to how long it’s taken to create, and how long it’s taken me to come to peace with writing it… it’s very soon.
When starting this book’s outline, I was actually on a train in China, traveling from Zhengzhou to Suzhou in 2019 while working as an illustrator for a live theatre production.
Photo by Dean StevensonThere is something magical about creativity on a train. Growing up in New York City, I often felt these bursts of inspiration on the subway, especially because this was before cell service was available down there and there weren’t other distractions. I miss that idle time to just be in my head, and maybe this is a reminder to myself to make that happen again.
On that train in China, I was riding the wave of extreme joy and terror after signing with Macmillan on a three-book graphic novel deal. I will never forget being on the phone outside of the restaurant in Zhengzhou, receiving this news from my agent.
If it had taken me ten years to see where Big Apple Diaries was going, I figured I needed to know what to write about next as soon as possible. I wrote an outline of where I saw the next part of my memoir going, knowing that the next one should also be in the same format.
I felt comfortable enough—and compelled—to write about the time after Big Apple Diaries took place. All within that following year way back then, I started a new school where I knew no one, joined the track team, my dad got remarried, and then died a few months later. Why should I write a fictional story for young readers if I have a story like this to tell from the other side? I knew from that day on the train that this book would be called Run Home.
Side note: I only recently noticed there is a similarly themed prose book for adults called Running Home by Katie Arnold, published in 2019. I noticed this after I was googling my own book. At first I was disappointed by this, but it seems serendipitously perfect that there are two similar books for different types of readers. It reinvigorates my confidence that this is the right book to be putting out there.
If you asked me back then whether I would write a book about that type of life-altering experience, I would’ve thought you were from another planet. Being a young person is so difficult even without these added layers on top. It took many, many, many years (15–20?!) to feel comfortable enough to share my experiences from that time. Through that lens of time, space, and healing was when I realised the saving graces of my teenage years—running, writing, drawing, and friendships. I saw the importance of sharing themes such as these to help young people today see real stories of deep emotion, seeing that they too can get through it.
When I was a teenager, I had an entire notebook dedicated for writing things like this.Writing Run Home happened in the background of my other projects for a few months. I knew I wanted to show more comic panels than Big Apple Diaries in this one. I learned so much writing and illustrating Big Apple Diaries, and the writing format for Run Home felt more experienced.
I dug through so many diaries, poem notebooks, online journals, and photos of my teen years to gather enough authentic language and feeling to pull from. While it is incredibly difficult looking at what I wrote back then, I just wanted more than anything to give “Little A” a hug and tell her she’ll get through this. I wanted to show young teens now that expressing these feelings is most important of all. Finding your people, your passion, and your path is essential.
Six out of about 20 different cover ideas. Run Home: A Graphic Memoir by Alyssa Bermudez debuts worldwide January 2026. Subscribe for more behind the scenes insight into making this dream come true.
Here’s the summary:This heartrending graphic memoir by Alyssa Bermudez ( Big Apple Diaries ) is a moving and unforgettable story about inner strength, healing, and finding hope.
It's 2002, and 14-year-old Alyssa is a freshman at a new high school where she knows NO ONE and the uniforms are hideous! What a disaster...
Even worse? Her parents are forcing her to join the cross-country team. No one needs to run, or sweat, this much!
Over time though, Alyssa actually starts to like running. She's getting better with practice, and some of the girls on the team are really nice. Alyssa begins to find a steady rhythm with high school, cross country, and her new stepfamily.
But Alyssa's dad is sick, and she doesn't know what to do. When the worst thing imaginable happens, Alyssa will need to count on her friends, family, and herself to keep running forward.
Thanks for being on this journey with me.
-Alyssa
February 2, 2025
Comics Colouring Timelapse
I wish I had remembered to do this more often during the year I spent colouring this book. In theory, it’s easy to just hit record—but why don’t I?! Every time I visit students in schools, they love seeing behind-the-scenes recordings.
For me, colouring is one of the easiest parts. Once a style guide is in place, I just follow my own rules and churn it out. After months (more like years!) of working in silence or with only instrumental music, I can finally turn the music back on.
Run Home was created entirely in Adobe Photoshop and will be available everywhere books are sold in 2026. Cover reveal coming soon!
September 25, 2024
The Magic of Live Wedding Sketching
Wedding season is almost here, and I’m so excited to be booked for more events! I’ve been hired for lots of weddings this year, focusing on my reportage-style ink drawings with watercolour on top. Lately, I’ve been doing more live guest portraits, which has been a fun challenge. It’s tricky to figure out how many I can get through during an event, but it’s been great to experiment with my style.
I love adding colours from the wedding flowers and decorations into the portraits. There’s something magical about creating artwork live at a wedding—it captures a special moment in a way that’s different from photography. The best part is when guests wear brightly coloured outfits because it gives me a chance to really make the watercolours pop.
Recently, I had to take some time off to recover from back surgery, but I’m getting stronger and gearing up for wedding season, which kicks off in November—just in time for summer in Tasmania! A lot of the weddings I do are up in Launceston, but I’d love to work on more in the Hobart area too. I don’t mind traveling though, especially with my electric car and our house’s solar panels making it more affordable.
I still need a few more weeks to fully recover before I can take on long drives, but I’m really looking forward to getting back to it soon!
January 17, 2024
SS23/24 Summer Print Designs
As you may know, I am an artistic director at Keshet Design where I create and oversee print designs for each seasonal fashion collection. I just wanted to share some of the current ones with you that I designed from scratch. I love creating colourful pieces for bold, unique women!
I’ve also been enjoying creating some process videos about this work behind the scenes. What sort of content would you like to see about this? Let me know in the comments!
A post shared by Alyssa Bermudez (@bermudezbahama)
A post shared by Alyssa Bermudez (@bermudezbahama)
November 29, 2023
Live Wedding Painting Tasmania Part 2
Imagine painting love stories, not at home, but right there in the middle of someone’s wedding. That's what I got up to recently, painting at not one, but two weddings in a weekend! And get this – the first one? It was a surprise for the bride, a gift from her sister.
I'm talking about LIVE wedding painting – turning special moments into art on the spot. Let me take you behind the scenes of these two love-filled events, where I worked as quickly as possible to create wedding day magic.
So, first up was Emily and Jason. They had their beautiful reception at Lark Distillery. They walked into their reception, thinking it's the scene they planned, and there I am with my paints and ink pens – surprise! Emotional vibes all around.
Lark Distillery, with its rustic charm, was the perfect spot. Warm tones, beautiful decorations – a dream setting. My job? Create quick sketches of guests. Different groups popped by my station for a snapshot, then back to the party they went.
Here's the tricky bit: it was a last-minute surprise, so I didn't know who's who among the VIPs. I tried to capture the heart of the celebration and did some last minute prioritising. There are a few leftover that I am continuing after the fact.
The next wedding of the weekend was Susannah and Kieran's love-filled day at Stefano Lubiana Winery. Picture this: an outdoor ceremony, an indoor reception with live music and tons of close knit family.
What set this wedding apart? Well, for starters, it wasn't about sketching guests this time. Instead, my task was to capture about 5 key moments of the day. I had to be quick on my feet, deciding which moments would make it. Susannah had a wishlist – their son, the cake, and the couple during the ceremony. Having a starting point helps, and knowing the family personally helps even more.
Here are some more snaps from the day. The trickiest part was not having daylight towards the end of the evening. I was adding finishing touches in the dark. Time to buy a portable light for my painting kit!
Looking back at this busy weekend, these gigs were more than just drawing. They shaped my style and how I approach each celebration. I have so much to learn and that’s what makes it so fun!
Tips for Future Couples:
For couples thinking about live illustration, here's a tip: If you have lots of guests, think about a different style – maybe capturing key moments instead of individual portraits. It's not just about the amount of art, but showing a unique perspective. If you do prefer guest portraits, be prepared to potentially have some of them finished afterwards.
Feel free to reach out to me if you want to find out more or check availability.
Until next time…
Follow the journey on Instagram:
November 9, 2023
Brooklyn Book Festival
I consider myself to be a pretty intermediate to advanced level traveler. I’ve been to so many developing countries, chaotic cities, and middle of nowhere icons. With this experience and my formative years spent growing up in New York City, I figured I can handle just about anything on a trip. Well my first trip back to NYC humbled me in many ways. This time I was older and had a one year old in tow. That certainly changes the vibe! We were traveling for 30 days straight. We were SO tired. We were SO depleted. We were so spoiled by the baby friendly city at home. My wishes for a highly productive NYC trip would not come true.
One of the highlights of the NYC trip that did come to fruition was being a part of the Brooklyn Book Festival! Of course there was climate change level flash flooding in NYC the day before it happened which was also the day we arrived into the city. However, the water cleared and the families flooded in to the festival!
Our activity was run by author, Dan Poblocki alongside illustrator Chris Danger and myself. Dan created a mad libs style story for the audience members to fill in the blanks. Along the way, Chris and I illustrated some of their wildly inventive scenes and characters.
After this illustrated story time was over, we signed books!
Of course, my number one fan was excited to get multiple books signed in person since it had been a while. <3
One of the best moments of this day was also when we went to Chipotle after. The burrito bowls had been missed, but the highlight was actually seeing a young girl reading a freshly signed copy of Big Apple Diaries at a table in there. I awkwardly waved to her and her family but she didn’t look up for even a moment. She was totally engrossed in my book, and I love to see it!
My nephew, AlexDespite our absolute travel chaos, it was really special to be in NYC again
