The "graphic lit" love child of Gabriel García Márquez and Raymond Carver, Carol Swain"s comics first appeared in print in the late 1980s, and Swain has since contributed her biting, bedazzling comics to over twenty anthologies across the globe. Her two graphic novels, Invasion of the Mind Sappers and Foodboy, have been kept in print by Fantagraphics Books, and Alan Moore describes Swain"s Foodboy as "dark and full of life, like soil... a perfect example of what modern comics are capable of if they only try." Collecting over thirty short stories by the London-based writer/artist, Crossing the Empty Quarter and Other Stories is Swain"s first career-spanning collection. Her introspective, boldly executed, and visually unique works are peppered with magical realism, autobiography, and undying punk attitudes, and while Swain"s canon of stories runs through a wide range of emotions and situations, they are all tied together with an art style that is universally appealing and undeniably unique.