My name’s Zudlow. I’m an artist and writer living in Anchorage, Alaska. When I tell people I was born in Maine, they get a strong mental image of deep pine forests, long beige beaches, granite mountains, fishing and hunting, lobsters, bears, and blueberries. And pretty much, that’s Maine—predictable, tame, reserved.

As a kid, I escaped the safeness and quietude of my environment with reading novels, and later that turned into writing my own. They were adventure stories, usually, with spaceships and time travel and wizards and mysterious business. As exciting as my plots were, my storytelling style was boring, and the twenty-fourth literary agent to reject my book in 2012 told me I should “work on my craft.” I guess when people in the literary industry say “work on your craft,” they mean take a writing class or buy a copy of Elements of Style. But I knew the heart of my issue. The realism that writing demanded lay outside the safety of Maine. So I decided to go out and see what the wide world was all about.

My search for Real Life took me to China, France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Japan. I slept on trains and ran to catch planes and jumped into taxis and rickshaws and managed to cross a few bays and gulfs on ferries. I trusted strangers and ate from suspicious plates and slept in rat-infested apartments and cried on sidewalks and fell in love and more than once got my heart broke.

These eight years haven’t all been adventure time. For four of those years I settled down in Taiwan and taught English. Those days were crucial to me as a writer. It’s hard to keep a child’s attention if your narration is intellectual and dry, let alone a child who’s learning English as a second language. The kids brought me down to Earth, and taught me that above all, what I create needs to be accessible and understood. And where words failed, pictures triumphed; it was during my tenure as a teacher that I began taking illustration seriously.

After my time in Taiwan, I returned to Maine, where I was gripped with an overwhelming sense of ennui. Had life really brought me back here, to this quiet corner of the States where nothing ever happened? I was back into my old bedroom. The world around me was rearranging itself after a pandemic. Things had Resumed. So I buckled down, started swimming regularly, and did the daily work to focus my art career. With slow-going work, I created a website, started this blog, built my YouTube channel, busted out dozens of comics, finished a novel, and illustrated album covers for independent musicians. The months back at home were long, but like the four years I spent talking to kids every day, that time helped turn me into who I am now.

Regardless, I needed a shake-up. And that shake-up happened to be the forty-ninth state. I moved to Alaska for a summer of seasonal work, and then I stayed. These days you can usually find me washing boats or leading guided glacier tours in Mandarin.

I don’t think that literary agent will ever realize that when she told a high school graduate to work on his craft, he blew that advice out of proportion and circled the world twice. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because on my fourth year in Alaska, I’m exactly the kind of rugged and world-seasoned artist I always wanted to be.

A lot of people ask what Zudlow means, so here’s the short story. When I first moved to Taiwan, it was to a “small town” (of 100,000 people) called Zhudong. The word for foreigner was Laowai. So I was the Zhu Dong Lao Wai—ZDLW. I threw in a couple vowels for pronounceability, and here we are. In Alaska I’m known as Boatwash (because I wash the boats), and in Mandarin-speaking circles I’m 小麦 (xiǎo mài). And to everyone back home, I’ll always be plain old John. I guess identity has always been important to me, and I’ve always been fascinated by how plastic it is. You really can be whoever you want to be.