Sam Hester Bio

Sam Hester is a visual storyteller. Sam’s award-winning comics have been published internationally, while telling real-life stories rooted in Calgary/Moh’kinsstis. A longtime advocate for comics as a medium for serious storytelling, Sam is a contributor to comics journalism, comics in academia, and the Graphic Medicine movement.

Since 2014, Sam has worked as a graphic recorder, one of only a handful in Canada.
Sam’s work draws upon deep listening skills, a unique graphic style, a passion for community-building… and a lot of markers.

In 2024, Sam was shortlisted for the position of Alberta Artist in Residence. Sam’s 2021 TED Talk about Graphic Medicine (using visual storytelling to support health care) has had almost 2 million views.

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A bit more about me

I grew up in Calgary, Canada, and for a long time I really didn't like Calgary much. Here's a comic I wrote for independent journalism outlet The Sprawl, about how I started liking Calgary after all.

I like it a lot when comics are featured in academic writing. Once I wrote an essay with illustrations and comics in it. It's really old now, but it's still one of my favourite projects. It's about how Lynn Johnston (who created the awesome comic strip For Better of For Worse) and Margaret Mahy (the award-winning New Zealand author) used local settings in their work.

I used to paint a lot of portraits. You can see some of them here on my (old, neglected) portfolio website. Maybe I should paint some more paintings in the future?