You know what? I don’t think that we’re going to expand the downtown connector. I also don’t think that we’re going to spend tens of billion dollars on a double decker downtown connector.
This is just one man’s hot-take, but I think we need to build places that are less dependent on cars and that lift up alternatives to driving such as walking and cycling and riding transit. I think this change needs to happen on every piece of our urban fabric, including our streets, and including our suburbs.
Observational sketches Burke did while she was being detained.
On Feb. 26, 2025, Rebecca Burke became a prisoner of the United States immigration system. Burke, a 28-year-old comic artist from Wales, had come to the U.S. on a tourist visa on Jan. 7, in the waning days of the Biden administration, with a backpacking itinerary that entailed staying with friendly homeowners in exchange for her lending a hand with household chores. The trip was also intended to serve as grist for Burke’s comic work, which has often revolved around the artist’s travels across America and elsewhere.
This wasn’t Burke’s first trip to the U.S., and none of this was expected to be atypical, except that by the time Burke attempted to cross the Canadian border en route from Seattle to Vancouver in late February, the Biden administration had given way to the full flowering of the Trump regime, which in its first 50 days had devoted itself with relish to the seizure, detention, and deportation of foreign nationals of all stripes. So when Burke was turned back by Canadian border officials — due to trouble, she was given to believe, with the nature of her living arrangements qualifying for a tourist visa — rather than being readmitted to the U.S., she was instead turned over to U.S. border officials, who subsequently took Burke’s statement, classed her as an illegal alien, and informed her that she would be briefly detained before being returned home to the U.K. Fingerprinted, shackled, and placed on a bus to a detention facility, Burke would be incarcerated by immigration authorities for the next 19 days. She had become one of the 32,809 human beings thus far disappeared, temporarily or indefinitely, into the immigration policing of the new American regime.
Burke was not given over directly to the custody of ICE, which held ultimate determination over her fate, but to the GEO Group, a for-profit private prison contractor operating 50 facilities across the United States, including the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was sent.1In her more than two weeks in that facility, Burke was kept in a single, large dormitory alongside 103 other detained women, given limited access to food, hygiene, and clean clothes, and unaware throughout the period when or whether she would be allowed to return home. She had been allowed early on to contact her parents (with whom she remained sporadically in touch during her detainment), and they in turn were able to reach British authorities. But while diplomatic efforts bore little fruit, Burke’s case did, in the meantime, make its way into news both in the U.K. and (to a more limited extent) in the U.S., having drawn the attention of the BBC, the Guardian, Newsweek, and, within the field of comics, Rich Johnston at Bleedingcool.com.
On March 17, Burke was finally and unexpectedly released from U.S. custody and allowed to board a flight home, where she remains today. When I spoke to her, some two weeks after the conclusion of her ordeal, she sounded rested and at ease at a friend’s home in London. It was clear, nevertheless, that the events of her two weeks in custody had left a lasting mark. Among other things, Burke has determined to turn this into both art, warning, and commemoration of the fellow detainees she met. Her next work (very different from the one she imagined making) will be a comic about her experiences as an erstwhile prisoner of the United States. She has published pages from the work in progress on her Instagram page.
ZACH RABIROFF: First of all, let me ask, how are you doing since you got back?
REBECCA BURKE: It's a bit overwhelming, but I'm feeling very motivated to share my story because it's a very unique insight that I've had with this whole event that most people don't see. I am feeling motivated to share my experience, and share the stories of the other people that I met.
When you first started planning a trip to the U.S., how was it supposed to work? What was the plan that you were imagining?
The plan was to have a four-month backpacking trip around North America and Canada, and I was supposed to be discovering myself; just one of those trips of finding my own inner strength, which I have now done in a deeper way than I first imagined.
I just wanted it to be a creative retreat for myself. I took a watercolor sketchbook with me. I took my journal. I wanted to go and meet new people, and have new experiences, and draw everything, and write everything. And I had always thought, oh, it would be cool after this to make a travel zine about my backpacking adventure. There was always an idea that some kind of comic would come from it, but I never anticipated the story going this way.
The detail of the trip that seems to have caused the problem was this homestay arrangement that you had. How did this work?
I used a [web]site that I've used in the past. I don't think the name helped my case at all — it was called Workaway. I've used Workaway before. I used it two years ago in San Francisco. I stayed with a host, and I helped in their garden a little bit, walked their dog a little bit, but I was mostly going off into San Francisco on bike tours and day trips. Helping around the house was never the prominent or dominant part of these trips.
And there had never been any trouble in any of those prior trips.
There were never any issues previously; not when I went to San Francisco, [not] last year when I went to Switzerland. I stayed for a whole month in Switzerland and I helped out gardening again on this homestay farm — a family farm — and I never had any issues there. I have stayed with a few people in Portland on Workaway, and I have also stayed in Seattle with people on Couch Surfing, which is a different website. The annoying thing is the people I stayed with on Workaway also had accounts on Couch Surfing. I could have said during my interrogation that I just stayed on Couch Surfing and that probably would have sounded better, but obviously I didn't understand what I was fighting against at that time and what the threat was that I was being interrogated over. I didn't know if I had said the wrong thing, if I could be detained. I didn't think that.
No one had given you trouble for this when you were applying for the visa in the first place?
No, I had a visitor visa waiver, which — from talking to my hosts and other people, and looking online — seemed to be all I needed for this work. It's what I used previously in America. We've since talked to an ex-ICE lawyer, and he said that what I did did not count as employment under their own definition.2 So I get the impression that [US immigration authorities] didn't want to let someone in [to the United States again] that Canada had refused, because they're supposed to be tougher than Canada. They figured if Canada has determined that she was working, she must be working here. Or this is just part of them really going to town on the numbers for people that they're deporting and interning. It was just very bad timing on my part.
By the time your trip started in January, Trump had been elected, although he hadn't taken office. What did you imagine things were going to be like here?
I was expecting there to be some uncertainty. I knew a lot of the people with whom I was staying were in the queer community and they did express to me, and I got a sense while I was staying with them, that people were scared. I was really worried for them, but I didn't think to be worried for myself. I thought, “Oh, this is a really unlucky situation for you guys and I'm glad I'm only here temporarily on holiday and I am able to leave.” I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to leave.
After Trump took office and things started to change here quite rapidly, what was that like for you?
I was hearing about ICE raids increasing. The people I was staying with had big group chats where they would give warnings if they saw supposed ICE vans patrolling the area. It felt very dystopian, even then. I remember thinking that this is not normal. It is not normal to be having to have chats with your neighbors, warning them of people coming to get you. It did not feel normal.
Did it make you nervous at all?
I didn't feel nervous because I didn't associate myself with someone who would be in danger. I'm not an immigrant, so I didn't think this was anything that would affect me at all. I was worried for these people I was with, and worried for their communities. I could see in lots of people I met and talked to, that they were nervous about what the next years would look like with Trump. But I didn't think — again, I was a bit detached from it — I didn't feel I was part of that at all or that I could be affected by it in any way.
So you were then stopped at the Canadian border while you were crossing into British Columbia. Was your plan at that point to return to the U.S. at any point during your trip or were you going to finish it out in Canada?
I had a flight booked home from Vancouver, Canada, at the end of April. I was going to be in British Columbia for two months, and I had some day trips planned. I was going to go to the Rocky Mountains for my birthday and I wanted to explore Vancouver Island and some of the other little islands. I felt like there was enough to do for two months in British Columbia. But I had this base, which was with the Workaway host that I was going to be helping out. I thought that was the end of my American stay, and now I was going to be in Canada, and then I was going to go home from Canada.
Because of Trump, I remember distinctly knowing I should have a lot more paperwork with me. So I made sure I had my outbound flight, and I made sure I had printed out documents of all my buses and coaches from Seattle to Vancouver. I showed my documents to the first border security officer when I first landed at JFK Airport, because I just wanted to prove I have no intention of staying here. I wanted them to see that I had the coach booked well before my visa ends, and I would be leaving America, going to Canada. I had evidence of my flight from Canada going back home. I really wanted to reassure them more than I would have two years ago when I went to San Francisco: I am leaving this place.
Tell me about what happened at the Canadian border.
They asked me what my intention was with going to Canada, and I said “traveling." And they said, “Who are you staying with?” I told them that I will be staying with this man and his family. They asked how I met the man and his family, and maybe it was one question more than I expected. I hadn't thought of what to say. I was just honest and said, “Oh, I met him on Workaway.” Now I think I could have been more vague. I could have just said that we met online.
I was in communication at the time with his current Workaway [visitor] who was helping around the house, from whom I was going to be taking over. And I remember messaging him at the border saying that they've stopped me. He asked me, “Did you just say you were staying with a friend, what I told you to say?” And I said, “No, you never told me to say that actually.” I had no indication that from anyone, or from my research or my host, that I needed a work visa. I'm sure I asked him specifically about visas when we had a phone call before I came, and he said I would not need a work one.
I saw with the UK and Canada relations, you can go to Canada for six months without needing a visa, so I thought I would be fine. But they had not heard of Workaway. I think it raised some flags for them, and they wanted to research what that was. They asked me the nature of my work and I said it was helping around the house and a little bit of childcare when needed. I think that they heard “childcare” and they saw that as work. They asked me if I was paid and I told them no, and that my hours are very minimal every week. I would only work every other week when he has the kids with him, just as some extra help around the house.
Not for money.
Not for money, just as an exchange to stay with him. But I remember him telling me distinctly, “We're going to be one of the easiest Workaways. I just like the kids to meet new people from different cultures. You're not going to do much. Maybe do laundry now then.” So I thought, “That sounds really nice. Jackpot. I'll stay on your lovely island in Canada and go kayaking and hiking and put your laundry in now and then. That sounds perfect.” But they [Canadian border officials] said that because they deemed it work that could technically be given to a Canadian, and then it needed a work visa.
So at that point they handed you back to the U.S. officials.
They waved my coach on to go without me, and two officers walked me to the American side. I had to wait there for them to then allow me back. They made me wait around for six hours, with very little information. I kept seeing loads of people coming in. They were dealing with a lot of people and I saw a lot of people coming in cars and then being stopped and escorted back to the Canada side. Clearly having been told, “No, you can't come into America.” That was happening a lot while I was sitting and waiting. My phone had run out of data and there was no free wifi there. So I asked a guy who I saw waiting around as well, if I could hotspot off him so I could let my parents know what was happening.
He [the man lending the phone] said he was really shocked he was stopped, because he lived in Vancouver, and he was going to Seattle to see a concert that he paid hundreds of pounds for. So to get cheap accommodation, he was using a cat-sitting app so he could cat-sit for someone and then go to the concert. It was going to be three days, and then he was going to go home. He said he's used it loads of times before, but this time for some reason they stopped him, and suddenly they were saying that that was work. He was just incredulous. And then he was turned around, so he left.
I did manage to call my parents and explained that no one was updating me about what was happening, that I just kept being told to wait.
How did your parents take the news when you called them? Were they concerned?
Yes, because I was very upset when I called them, but at that point I was upset because I thought I was going to have to find somewhere to stay for a few nights in America while I figure out the work visa. So I was upset just thinking my plans were delayed a bit. I didn't know. I was just trying to recalibrate a bit because I had thought I would be in Canada by now. My mom was trying to reassure me, saying that things always take a while on the American side. My mom told me to just hang tight. She told me that I hadn’t done anything wrong so it will be okay, that they will let me out and I can go back to Canada.
My parents were on holiday at the time, and it was nighttime for them because it was probably now about 6 p.m.. My coach came in at 2:30 and it was 6 or 7 when they called me into an interrogation room. They were going to ask me some questions and the man [questioning Burke] was going to summarize the answer, and I shouldn't stress, I shouldn't worry, this is all just procedure. They just wanted to ask me some questions about what I'd been doing in America. He was very relaxed, he said that this is just a chat we're going to have, and that I don't need to be anxious.
He asked me for my timeline of what I'd been doing in America and who I stayed with, and I mentioned Workaway. Again, I was just trying to be as thorough as possible. I thought if I give them all the information, they can check it out and they'll see it's fine. And that will be helpful for getting me out quicker if I give them more information. After we talked, I waited again in the waiting area for an hour and then he said, “We need to ask you more questions. My boss said she's trying to figure out if what you were doing counted as work or not. And so I want you to clarify a bit what you were doing with these hosts you said you were staying with.” He then asked me, did any money exchange hands? And I said no. And he said, “If you stopped providing your services, would they have kicked you out?” And I said no, they would not have.
He asked if was there any kind of contract. I said no. He asked me, “What is the purpose of these stays?” I told him that it was cultural exchange, more to integrate into the communities where I am staying, and with the host. I help out around the house a bit, and the hosts take me on day trips: for instance, they took me to the coast. One host took me hiking in the forest and cross country skiing. These are not things that a boss would normally do. It is not like work.
I was trying to impress that it was not a working relationship at all. They cooked big feasts for me. They bought groceries for me, they gave me vegan food. They were very nice and treated me to lots of nice day trips and drove me around places, and I cooked food for them sometimes and basically just joined in the rota of chores and cooking and social engagements. The officer summarized some things on his computer. Another officer came in, because I think they were struggling to get what I said to match what they wanted. That's what it felt like, because he called in backup to ask me more questions like, “Did any cash enter your hands from these people?” Clearly they wanted me to just say yes, but I said no, because no money had been given to me. It felt like they were really pushing to find just the one thing that I would say, so they could say, yep, she was doing it.
He asked me a few other questions. He said, “This isn't for the form. I just want to ask you. I'm curious: if we were to release you, do you know what you would do now? Would you try to go back to Canada or what would you do? I just want to know, nothing to do with the form. I'm not going to type this down, but I'm just curious. What would you do now? Obviously your plans have been interrupted a little bit.” I said to him, “I'm not sure what I would do. I would probably try and get this work visa and go back to Canada.” He said, “But if you can't go to Canada, what will you do?” And so I said, maybe I would find somewhere else to explore here a bit.
I don't know why, but I feel like that was him maybe ticking the box of having asked me if I would leave voluntarily, even though it was never framed as, “are you going to fly home immediately if that's your only option?” He just casually asked, “What are you going to do if you can't go back into Canada?” And because I said that maybe I would try and find some alternate plans to make the most of my time here, maybe that was interpreted as me refusing to go. Maybe he wanted me to say I would immediately fly home, even though at that point I had no reason to say that. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was happening at all.
They never asked me if I was able to pay for my flight home, [or told me that the] alternative is I am detained. They never asked me that. He went back to his boss and they talked a bit again. I had to wait in the waiting area again, probably another hour. And then he gave me the transcript and he asked if I could sign that I agree with everything that's written there. I remember seeing that he'd summarized it. He'd interrogated me for an hour or so. It was quite long. But I remember finding the page where it said something about my accommodation arrangements or something like that. And the answer that he typed up in summary for me was that I was working in exchange for accommodation. It hadn't said anything else about all the details I'd given about how it was more cultural exchange, or how I had no contract and I wasn't paid. He just summarized it. I remember thinking and debating briefly within myself whether to flag that and ask him to add the rest of the stuff. But I just thought that if I sign this, I'll be out of here sooner. And I'd been there for eight hours.
Did you get anything to eat or drink during this process?
I had asked for water a few times, but they were too busy to get me any. They offered me a breakfast bar, but I knew it wasn't vegan, so I didn't have that. I had been trying to get water for a while because I'd finished all the water I had, but they never got around to getting me any water. I was very tired and I skipped lunch. I thought to myself, “I'll just have a late lunch when I get to Vancouver.” It was now 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., so I just signed the transcript, thinking I'll be able to go now that I've signed it and they've got their paperwork. But instead they called me back, and they took my fingerprints, and then they called me over again and said that they hereby are deporting me from the United States because I have violated the terms of my visa. And I remember I was feeling really dizzy and shaky and I had to crouch down in front of his desk. I felt like I was going to pass out. I was trying to understand what he was saying. I kept asking him, please tell me how I violated my visa. Can you tell me exactly what law I've broken? And he was kind of fumbling a bit and couldn't answer me directly.
And he just looked really sad to be telling me this, really sad when I was asking these questions, he didn't know what to say when I asked him to tell me clearly exactly what I did that counted as work, and he didn't know. He was fumbling. I saw him look to his supervisor and then his supervisor came over to deal with the situation. The supervisor was just really firm. You worked the chores, you were doing housework, you violated it. I remember asking, “If I had been with a friend and doing this cooking and cleaning, that would be fine?” He said, “That's a different scenario.” So I asked, “What if I had been with my parents? Sometimes I go visit my parents and I cook and clean and that isn't work, is it?” And he said, “That's different. That's not the same.” I remember repeating, “I have a flight from Canada, I'm leaving. I don't want to stay here.” He said, “That's not the issue here.” And they just walked me to a cell and I remember I kept asking if I can call my parents. But they kept saying “Later, later,” and they frisked me and put me in a cell. They said, “You can call your parents later.” I didn't know what was happening.
So then you were taken to a different facility?
Yes. I probably was in the cell at the border for an hour or two. At 11:30 p.m. they took me out of there, and handcuffed me and put me in a van to take me to this facility. Before they handcuffed me, they did let me call my parents because I kept insisting I needed to update my parents. My dad was on speakerphone and he asked me how long I would be at the facility. The officer answered for me. He said, “She'll be there while we wait to put her on the next flight. It'll just be one or two days maximum.”
Were your parents concerned at that point?
Yes, they were really concerned, but I had to hand my phone back to the officer, so we couldn't talk very long. And then I was in the van and it was about a three hour drive in the darkness to Tacoma. It was dark. There was another man in the van with me who'd been stopped at the border. He had handcuffs on as well. We both just sat in the back of this van and the officers were chatting about random family life drama, and it felt very surreal. I couldn't believe I was in handcuffs. I was exhausted. I remember trying to sleep, but the benches we were on were so hard, it was as if they'd taken the seat cushions and just pulled them out. So we were on the hard-back benches in this van and there was no headrest, and I had handcuffs on, so I was really uncomfortable. But I remember desperately trying to find some position to just be able to sleep for a bit. I was exhausted and very emotionally drained.
Were you aware of what the facility was? Because as I understand it, this wasn't actually an ICE facility. This was run by a third-party contractor, GEO.
Yes, GEO. I didn't know where exactly I was going at first when they had said I was going to have to wait for a flight. I thought they were going to put me in a hotel while I waited. But then they were using the word, “facility,” so I thought that it's somewhere else where I'm going to wait. Somewhere just for people who are waiting for their flight. I didn't know what it was going to be like. And then when I arrived, I saw people in scrubs, basically — overalls, and my brain sees people walking around like that and I say to myself, “I'm in prison now.”
Describe the surroundings to me. What was the facility like?
I arrived in the darkness. My first view of the facility was this big gate that opened up to allow the van in, and then it closed behind us. So we're in this very enclosed garage area, I guess to ensure protection. It had two barriers and it was fully airlocked before they opened the door to the facility. It felt very secure and inside it was all concrete. The first room I entered had loads of cells around the outside, and desks and computers in the middle. It felt very surreal. The contrast between the detainees in there, and me and this guy who just arrived – we tear up, both of us. We are really scared and not knowing what's happening. We hear the GEO staff coming in to work, putting their water bottles down, joking with each other. Very surreal. We were having this absurd experience and it’s just a normal any-other-day for them. They're laughing and joking, and it didn't feel real to me.
What about the other inmates? What were they like? Did you speak to them at all when you first arrived?
Well, for ages, I was in what they call, “ intake”, which is where these desks and computers are, and some holding cells, and they process you. At this point, they took my backpack, read every single item in my backpack [back to me], and locked it away. I had to change out of my clothes. They gave me a set of the yellow overalls and I had to wait to see the medic for checks and loads of procedures.
I had arrived about 2:30 a.m. and then I was put in the dorm where I would be staying for the next 19 days. [I stayed there] until 5:30 a.m., which I later learned is the wake up time every day.
I remember crying as soon as I went in because I was overwhelmed and I hadn't slept all night. And I was in shock at this point, I think. And this lady, Claudette, came up to me and she said, “Why are you crying?” And I said, “ I don't know why I'm here.”
She said, “It's okay. You'll be okay. Just make a phone call. I'll show you how.”
She helped me make my call, because I was told you get a free phone call. I called my parents, but this first day I was very focused on admin. I knew I had to give them my A-number [an identification number assigned to each inmate] so that they could put money on my account. This is what they had told me at intake. I knew I needed money. I only had this one free call, and if I didn't get money on my account, I wouldn't be able to make any more calls. I wouldn't be able to connect to the outside world at all.
That terrified me. I couldn't conceive how I could ever get out if I couldn't make these calls. So I called my parents and they answered, and I don't even remember saying much more than, “Here's my A-number, you need to write this number down, you need to go to this website, you need to put in my A-number and my facility.”
I read out the address of the facility again to double check they had it. And I told them that they have to put money in my account so that I can make phone calls. I was being really practical. I think the only capacity my brain had left was to just think of actions that needed to be taken. So I was just telling them instructions. I didn't even really let them speak. I kept saying, “You need to write this down. Have you written this down? Read it back to me. Do you have it right?”
They said they had it right. And then we ran out of time. I remember thinking, “Okay, I've done that. Now I just need to wait for the money to come in.” I carried my stuff to the cell that they just assigned me, where there was a lady called Rosa who was mostly Spanish-speaking. She knew very little English, and I remember being concerned that I woke her up when I arrived there. I felt really bad that she was sleeping when I walked into the cell.
But then she saw I had my box of stuff and she instantly jumped out of bed to start helping me make my bed, which is just this thin, inflated mattress. And she helped me put my one sheet over it and lay my one blanket out, which is this really itchy, rough blanket that everyone has. It was very sweet how everyone just jumped into action to help me. I'd woken her up, but she saw I needed help and she got out of bed, just instantly started helping me put my stuff where it should go. And I asked her, how long has she been there? She told me, one year. And hearing that, when I had just arrived and had just been told I’d be there for only one or two days, and then the first person I talked to saying they'd been there a year, that was really scary.
I remember calling my friend later that day, after eventually getting money in my account, and just sobbing, saying, "I don't want to be here a year. I don't know how I can cope with that.” Anytime I would cry in there, people would come to help. That first day I cried the most, I think because of the shock. And until I had that money in my account, I was really scared that I'd given my parents the wrong number somehow, or they'd misheard it, or they had the wrong website. I was terrified that I was stuck without any way to communicate to them.
They weren't giving you any other way to call or send an email?
You have no internet connection in there at all. You have these iPads, but they're only loaded with certain approved apps. And one app is to make requests, and you can choose to make a request to ICE or to the facility if you need something, like you need to request special dietary requirements or extra clothing. I remember the first day I did the request to ICE and I said, “I'm a tourist. I've just been backpacking in America for a month and two weeks. I don't know why I'm here. I want to go home. Please, can you help me?” I never got a reply. You can also, on the iPad, check your account and you can see your money that's in your account. You have to move that money from your main account onto your phone account in order to make phone calls. But then money in your main account you could also use for the commissary, which was like a shop that you could also access on the iPad to buy things like shampoo, or nail clippers, or some crisps, or Oreos, or pot noodles.
A sketch Burke did inventorying the clothes and other items she had while being detained.
Outside of that, what were they giving you as far as food and hygiene products were concerned?
They gave me one bar soap, hand soap, and a toothbrush, some toothpaste, and one cup. And I had some clothes: I had the yellow overalls, but you're also supposed to be given two sets of sweats, like sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. I was only given one, and I remember reading the checklist of things I should have been given. I had a lot missing from that list. Everyone was supposed to have two sweatshirts, but I was only given one. And the second day I asked for another one and they said they didn't have any spare.
And so I had the same sweatshirt for the whole time I was in there. It got dirty, but I held onto it as long as I could. I thought, “This really needs a wash,” but I didn't want to put it into the laundry that comes twice a week. They roll in this big bin for you to put in stuff for laundry. I didn't want to do that because I knew that would mean I'd have a night without the sweatshirt. And it got really cold in the night. I woke up every night because it got cold and I didn't want to sacrifice my one sweatshirt for the laundry because I knew I would have a really cold, restless night, more restless than normal, because normally at least I have my sweatshirt.
And you couldn't get anybody to respond to your complaints about that?
No. Everyone, all the other females in there, they told me, “No, they're not going to get that for you. I've been asking for ages. I've not got one for months.”
I was supposed to also have a jacket for going into the yard, but they never gave me a jacket. Luckily, some of the other women would lend me theirs when I had booked to go outside for the one hour of yard time we were allowed each day. I was supposed to have four towels and two hand towels, and I was only given one towel and no hand towels. But the impression I got very quickly in there was that they were getting a lot more people than they had previously received, so they were running out of stuff and running out of room, because at some points they ended up changing some of the cells that were designated as toilet cells into room cells. And in my dorm, there were cells around the edge, but also some free standing bunks in the open area, which I also got the impression they had added later on when they realized they needed a greater capacity of beds. So there were these freestanding bunks in the open space, but also all the cells along the wall had bunks in and toilets. For the people in the open space to have a toilet, they had assigned some cells to be the communal toilet cell, but they had started changing those to be back to [detainee] cells because they were running out of space to put all the new people coming in. I heard in the first week, they said, “We're going to get 90 more people next week and then we're going to be at capacity.”
The staff were complaining all the time, which really rubbed me the wrong way. It just felt very insensitive for the staff to be complaining about how much work they have to do. It felt very strange to hear people complaining about mundane work issues. It’s hard to hear them say, “I've got to do an extra shift next week,” when we're all in there and we're not allowed to leave. There are women terrified in here who haven't seen their family for months and months, or years, and they're complaining because they have to work an extra shift next week.
At what point did it begin to sink in for you that you weren't going to be leaving soon?
The first few people I talked to didn't correct me when I said that I was told I’d only be here one or two days. They would just nod. But then there was this Irish lady called Christine who saw me crying at one point on the first day. And when I said to her that they told me one or two days, she just kind of looked at me and she said, “That's what they told me, too.” I asked her how long she had been here, and she told me, five weeks.
And then I realized quickly that I just had to shift my expectations if I was going to cope. Christine had told me that she thought I would be here two to three weeks, minimum. So I decided to tell myself that I was going to be here two weeks, because then if I would leave sooner, it would be a bonus. And if it was two weeks, then I would have been prepared for that. So I really, really quickly had to recalibrate. I knew if I kept going around muttering that I was only going to be there for one or two days and then that didn't happen, it would be worse for me to have to deal with that. I felt, okay, I can use my own power and my own autonomy now to prepare myself instead of waiting for one or two days to pass and still being there. I wanted to control my mindset.
How much risk did you feel like you were in? Because here on the outside, while all this was going on, we were starting to hear these news reports about legal residents being sent to overseas prison camps in El Salvador, for instance. And I don’t know if any of this sort of thing was reaching you, or if you were aware that was going on.
Yes, there were three TVs in the dorm really high up on the wall. One was always the Spanish channel. There were a lot of Spanish speaking women in there. One was always a film or TV channel, and normally the TV station was set to — which I didn't understand — Border Security [a TV show about border agents]. And I thought, why are you showing this kind of show in here? It felt very strange to show a cop show about looking for people smuggling drugs in across the border. The third TV was always the news. So we were seeing these things happening, and that definitely made me feel more scared. I had this general impression that things are escalating here and I am stuck in here, and because of all these things going on, I could really easily just slip under the radar and be stuck here a long time. There are a lot of us, and more people coming in and it felt like the ICE officers were not prepared for these numbers.
That was scary to see the news and feel this is part of some bigger story. I felt really, really scared, but also it made a bit more sense to me seeing what else was happening. I felt a bit less like this is my fault. It was more about what's happening right now. This is happening to other people. Immigration officers are really cracking down and wanting to show big numbers. I was just someone who wasn't squeaky clean. I've become one of those numbers, and more and more people coming in after me were also having the same kind of reaction I had when I first came in: I don't know why I'm here. That was the common response of the people who came in a few days before me.
While I was there watching people arrive, they were saying, “I don't know why I'm here.” Some people said they had a work permit, so they didn’t know why they were here. Other people, were saying they had green cards so they didn’t understand why they were here. People would tell me that they were just visiting their family in the Philippines, and on the way back, suddenly something flagged on their file that they thought had closed ages ago, but now it's flagging again, and now they’ve been handcuffed and they are here. There was a general sense of confusion and lack of information, people being very scared and not knowing why they were in there. So the fact that my situation was not an isolated issue of just a mistake they made with me, but other people all coming saying, “This is a mistake, this is a mistake,” made me feel more like I wouldn't just be plunked out of there when they realize it was a mistake. And I felt more that these “mistakes” might be intentional on their part.
Now, while all this was going on, you became kind of an artist for the other prisoners, is that right?
Yes. The first day, after bouts of crying for hours and adjusting to my new reality, and after I did see that money had gone to my account, I had a bit of a chance to breathe finally and know, okay, I've got some resources here. I remember thinking, I can't control this. I can't control being in here, but what are the things that I can still do? I can still write and I can still draw. And so I just asked the officer for some paper and a pen, and I just started drawing the people on my table. The first girl I drew was a Canadian citizen, actually, who was trying to escape religious persecution and was trying to move to America with her boyfriend. She was reacting very enthusiastically to having been drawn, exclaiming, “Wow, it's so good!”
So other people's ears perked up and they wanted to know what's going on over at my table. The Canadian girl was showing off my drawing to everyone, so then some other people asked if I could draw them. I started drawing some other people and it felt good and normal because I make comics. I draw a lot for just my own hobby and wellbeing, and I love making things for people and seeing them being really pleased with it. So it felt normal in this very absurd situation to be making people smile by drawing them. Sometimes when I go to art fairs, I have portrait commissions so people can pay to have me do a quick portrait of them. I always loved seeing their reactions to those, and it was the same feeling I had in there.
It was reassuring to have these normal feelings inside me in this very strange situation. I knew I was still myself, at least, even if everything around me was very different from what I was used to in life. I was still me. I could still draw people, and no one could stop me from drawing. So that's what I did every day. I would have a little quota each day of people maybe from the day before who had asked if I could draw them. And I'd been maybe too tired from drawing, so I would say tomorrow or “manana”, which is Spanish for tomorrow. I was forced to pick up a little bit of Spanish in there. Most people spoke Spanish. They would point at my drawing when they would see me set up with my drawing paper and pencil. They would point at it and then point at them to say, “me, next”.
When I felt like I had the energy to do it, I did, but when I got tired after doing a bunch in a row, I would tell them, “manana, manana.” It just became part of each day. I would try to remember who had asked me yesterday to do a drawing and I would have little mental lists of who was waiting to have me draw them. That felt productive, having little assignments for myself. Sometimes I would draw big groups of them together. One set of friends were fighting over who would keep the drawing. They asked me to duplicate it, so I had to just copy it again so that they could have one each, so they could both have a copy. Some people started asking me to draw their children or their boyfriend, and one person wanted me to keep drawing her and her boyfriend in a wedding gown and suit so she could send it to him and ask him to marry her.
It was very wholesome and it felt very nice to make these people smile, because often in the day you would just see some people crying and I wouldn't know how to help them. If I was with someone when they were crying, I would try to hold their hand or hug them because most of the time you can't, there was a communication barrier, so all you could do was just give them a hug. But drawing felt like a positive way in which I could make them happy for a bit.
And what about you? How were you coping psychologically?
It’s very weird. There was one day that I remember thinking, “Oh, this was a good day.” And I remember catching myself — how can I have a good day in here? But it was because the food arrived when I was hungry. Sometimes it would arrive really, really late. One time we had dinner at midnight, but there was that one day when the food arrived just around when I was starting to feel hungry. I think maybe that was the day. Also, they put oregano on my beans and I was like, “Whoa, a seasoning. That's great.” Instead of my beans just floating in this dirty bean water with cold mashed potato, I had oregano one day. I showed everyone — “Guys, oregano on my beans!” And everyone cheered because everyone had become invested in my poor food journey of having the same cold beans every meal.
People also said I was funny and I was making people laugh, and I don't know where that came from, because on the first day arriving in tears and distraught and shocked, and having my whole holiday plan ruined, and being terrified, and having no information, I remember thinking that I could easily lose my mind in here. I have mental health issues and a lot of anxiety, and I felt like I could easily let them come to the surface and really snap. But I remember thinking, that won't help you in here. You're stuck here either way. You either manage yourself or you don't. But either way, you're still going to be in here, so isn't it better to try and manage yourself and just cope? And I don't know where that came from, because normally I really struggle. I've struggled a lot in life, and I've been to a lot of therapy, so maybe I just saw this as a kind of therapy test. I've had my skills that I've learned in therapy and now this is a test run and I have to use them. And it's the greatest exposure therapy I've ever been through.
A sketch Burke did while being detained of her food tray.
I suppose it must have helped when you started seeing that your case was getting on the news and that you were getting some attention.
Yes, yes. That definitely felt like a relief. But it also came with a lot of feelings of guilt because I had at this point been talking to a lot of the other women and hearing their stories, and I felt very guilty that I was getting attention while they were not. I felt my story was not a unique case of, “I shouldn't be here.” I felt like no one should be here. No one I've talked to deserves to be here. The asylum seekers who would be facing great violence to themselves or their family if they returned home, why are they not in the news? Why am I in the news?
Some people would come up to me and ask how I did that, and could I put their face on the TV, too. I felt really bad because I didn't know how to help them. One girl came up to me and she showed me photos of the domestic abuse she'd been through, to try to convince me that she needed help, too, and that she had a case. I felt like everyone there deserved the same spotlight that I had. And I think that's when I decided I needed to actually take note of their stories and started to plan this comic that I want to make. Now I'm out to spread awareness of their stories. Because I didn't even know that these places existed. I didn't know this is the place where they put people seeking asylum. I didn't know this was how they were treated. These people get no information. Some people had gone months waiting for an update from ICE. There's no one advocating for them. And that felt like an atrocity. There are people in there who are not getting support, who have no one championing them, or they don't happen to have contacts with journalists or a nice, cute story of being a backpacker on holiday with Reels and Instagram posts to back it up. And they've just disappeared from the world and no one's noticed, and their stories are really, really sad.
I read in one of the reports that you had come down with some kind of respiratory illness while you were there. Is that correct?
Yeah, I got really sick while I was in there. And how it works in there if you're sick, is you'd have to sign up for sick call. And that means at 5 a.m. they wake you up and you have to go to a holding cell and wait to be seen by the medic. I put it off for a while. I didn't want to be woken up at 5 a.m. I thought sleep should help me. Sleep is hard to come by there anyway, because there's constant noises in the night, and chatter or walkie-talkies going off from the offices. And I thought waking up at 5 a.m. to go for a sick call isn't going to help. I put off going to see the medic for as long as possible, but then I realized it was hurting to swallow and eat, and I was already not eating a lot, so I thought this isn't good for me. And I went to the medic and they did a COVID test, which was negative, and I ended up going three times, and they just gave me each time an allergy pill, which I found out from talking to a lot of people that that's the standard pill they give you. For most ailments you go to the nurse for, they'll give you this allergy pill and it basically knocks you out for the day. You get super drowsy.
I got the impression that they just give you that pill so that you sleep it off, but it wasn't helping with my symptoms. I did like it because I was actually able to sleep during the day more, and I hadn't been sleeping well at all since I arrived. I actually thought it was nice to get this pill that's going to knock me out for a few hours in the day. Sleeping was a double-edged sword because sleeping meant you skip some of the time in that place, but waking up was also really hard because — especially in the beginning — I would forget I was in there and then I'd wake up from a nap and I'd have to work hard all over again to regulate myself and adjust to still being in here. I would fall asleep and forget I was in this place and think it was just a nightmare.
Eventually, I ended up having to go to the doctor because I was getting worse, and my throat was really bad, and I was coughing all night long. There was one night where I don't think I slept at all because I was coughing all night. I went to the doctor the next day — the system there is if you go to the nurse three times for the same thing, then they upgrade you to the doctor. So I was called to see the doctor and he asked me when I arrived if I needed a chaperone. And I remember thinking, I'm just here for my cough. I don't imagine anything happening in here that I'd need a chaperone for, because I'm just here for a cold or flu situation. So I told him, “No, I'll be okay.”
And he said to me, “Are you sure you don't want a chaperone? Because if you're scared, it's best to get a chaperone. Sometimes people come in here and then they end up reporting me for sexual assault.”
And when he said that, I was thinking, well, now I kind of want a chaperone, now that you've said that, because now I'm terrified. You've just either joked about sexual assault, which is highly inappropriate, or you've admitted that people in here have reported you for sexual assault. So I was really on edge after that. I was really scared, but I told myself I'll ask for one if he does something that makes me more nervous. I'll say that, actually, I've changed my mind. I want a chaperone. But I felt too awkward then to say that now I want one. So I just said it was okay. And then he mostly just talked at me for ages, which felt very strange. The whole time I’ve been in here, really sick, and I'm having to sit here and he is in charge of me while I'm here, and he is the only one in the room with me and he is making jokes and just chit-chatting to me. It just felt very strange. I wanted to be released as soon as possible and go back and sleep. But he was asking me where I'm from, and I said I was from Wales, and he started singing Tom Jones songs to me. And I just sat there with my arms in my lap and I didn't know how to respond.
The whole thing was very awkward. He also said to me, “I know how you feel being in here. I think we have the same experience, because I'm from New Zealand, and 10 years ago my wife made us move here, so I'm basically detained too.” I remember thinking that was really an inappropriate thing to say, he just didn't seem to be connecting with the reality of the situation at all. He put me on edge. At one point he wanted to feel my throat, and I remember feeling my heart going really fast. I became really scared and aware that something could happen in here and there's no one around. I was really relieved when he said I could go.
Did you get any treatment from him?
He prescribed me a bunch of pills, but they just seemed to similarly knock me out for a bit. I spent a few days sleeping, which felt depressing because I'd come to rely on every day doing my drawings and my writing to feel normal. I think also because I was physically exhausted, I definitely noticed my mental resolve was struggling. Also, I think before I got sick, all my energy had gone into my mental strength and now my body was demanding some energy, too. There wasn't enough left to keep the positive attitude up.
What was your reaction when you found out that they were going to let you go? It seems like it caught you off guard.
My parents had gone to the media and my dad had made a Facebook post that went quite viral, and after that, they seemed to start paying attention to me. My first interaction with an ICE officer — he was called Officer Domo — wasn't my assigned officer because they assigned me an officer who was on annual leave for two weeks when I arrived. But this Officer Domo came into the facility to see me specifically, and he said, “We've had emails from the British Consulate, and you've been moved to the top of the pile and we're working on your case right now. We're going to try and get you out of here as soon as possible.” He said, “I'm going to come and see you tomorrow. Do you have any questions?” They seemed to be very suddenly on it with me.
And the next day while I was napping on my bunk, the ICE officer came into the dorm to see me. This was my officer who had been on annual leave and he'd clearly just come back from holiday. He came in to see me and he said, “We have moved through your case. Everything has been signed off and you're going to have a flight next week.” And then he left. Everyone around me was shocked because it's very rare for an ICE officer to come in directly to see you. Clearly, they were very keen to give me information now, because they knew there were other parties interested in this information and more people were paying attention to me. That was the impression I got. The Irish lady, Christine, when I told her that ICE had been in the dorm to see me, was incredulous. She said they never do that. She said, “You must be special.” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I don't know about that.”
So [Officer Domo] came into the dorm and then two days after that, they called me to intake and he met with me in a cell. He said, “I've booked you this flight. You are going on Monday, here are the flight details, this is the time, this is the terminal you will arrive at in London.” And he gave me a bunch of information.
When I told my friend Christine this, she had just been told around this time that she would be getting a flight away soon. And she had begged her officer to tell her when she was getting a flight, because she has four children that she wanted to also get on a flight back as close together as possible. They told her that they cannot give her this information, that she was not allowed to know.
It felt like they gave me my flight information because they wanted me to be able to reassure my parents — and maybe also the press — that I was getting out of there. That is what it felt like to me. They were really trying to show that they were giving me information, whereas that did not feel at all that that was the standard procedure. And the officer said to me specifically, before he let me go back to the dorm, “I've been told to tell you that you have received no special treatment here, that this is how long it would take with a case like yours normally. This is normal.” This completely backtracked what Officer Domo had said earlier that week, which was, you've been moved to the top of the list. You are high priority now.
So now my officer was saying he really wanted to impress upon me that I had no special treatment, but all the other women I talked to were saying that this is very fast, this is very unusual to have three interactions in a week about your case with an ICE officer. It doesn't go that fast, normally. I definitely feel it was a result of the attention that had been brought to me in the media that had made them act a bit faster. I had had no contact before that, before it went viral. I hadn't heard anything from anyone.
So you think it was the media more than any kind of diplomatic overture?
Yes, because I had called my embassy from the second day. I called them daily from 9 a.m. as soon as they opened in San Francisco. And [the woman at the embassy] had been trying to email my officer but had gotten no reply. And then every time I called her, she said there was no update. When there was a consideration for a while of my parents potentially being allowed to pay for a flight to get me home — which we learned is called “voluntary departure” — the embassy didn't seem to know the procedure for how we would go about this. When I did get a letter from ICE, saying I was eligible for voluntary departure, I asked the embassy what I should do now, she had no idea. She said, “I think we'll just pay for the flight and then you'll go home.”
But I talked to other women in there who were trying to get voluntary departure, and they told me that you need to go to court for that and you need to get approved. I asked one lady who was doing it, an Indian girl, how long have you been here? She had just been granted voluntary departure. And she said she had been there for two months. I remember getting really scared that I was going to be stuck there waiting for a court date. In the end, we never did that because they just deported me.
You're thrown a lot of terms and nothing's explained to you. Steps are never laid out clearly. It's very scary. You think you might have asked for something or started down a route. Like when I said in my letter, before I knew any of the legal terms, I said, “My parents are happy to pay for the flight, please let me know.” And then when they told me that I was eligible for voluntary departure, I was really worried that meant they had locked me down that route, and now I'd have to wait for a court date. It is really scary when you feel you've got no immediate communication with these people, so you don't get the chance to know what each thing means. The most frightening point for me was the unknown, not having any information. It felt like a Kafka novel where you're trying to get somewhere, trying to see this person, and you are always led down other routes, or being told that you have to wait for another day, or you need this paperwork, or you need to go here. You're always chasing this thing, but more steps are being introduced between you and this goal, and it's impossible to get there. None of that changed until there was attention brought to my case with the media.
How did you feel when you got on that plane and headed home?
I was relieved immensely, relieved that I was out. But also very sad and guilty for all the people that I'd left. I felt like I wasn't allowed to be crying. I'd only been there for three weeks and people had been there for months, so I felt like I have no right to cry. I'd been there for such a fraction of time that these other women have been in there, and they're so strong, and I'm sobbing, but I have not suffered nearly as much as they have. It made me feel like I had to do something to help them.
And what about when you got home and you saw your parents again?
That was really hard because I was worried about them, maybe sometimes more than I was worried about me. They were already worried about their daughter going backpacking on a holiday. So then this was happening, and it was around my dad's 60th birthday. They were on holiday in Port Adventure, and I remember feeling so bad that I'd ruined their holiday with this news that I'd been detained. I know that they'd spent a lot of time in the hotel on holiday, calling embassies and numbers and trying to help me. I felt very bad that I'd ruined their holiday and that my dad's birthday plans were canceled because he told me he didn't feel like celebrating when his daughter was stuck. They told me most of this afterwards because it turns out that when we were on the phone, we each tried to act better than we were, to not make the other worry.
But since I've been back, they've told me how they were hardly sleeping at night. My mom had nightmares, and this Mother's Day, my mom just burst into tears in the morning. She said she had been really worried that I wouldn't be home for Mother's Day. I never expected this to happen to me, but they also never expected this to happen to their daughter. And the fact that I had no real means to communicate or get information meant yes, that was terrifying, but also it meant I simply couldn't act. Whereas they felt the entire time the pressure to act because they were able to. So they felt like they had to constantly be working on finding information, looking at prospective lawyers, trying to spread awareness, put my story out there. They were working a lot and I know it halted their lives for the whole time I was in there.
I keep telling them that they saved me from America, and I'm very grateful for them. It was very emotional seeing them again after that, because they'd been holding it in a bit for me the whole time, and I'd been holding it in for them a bit the whole time whenever we had our daily phone calls. Seeing them, I think it just hit me that it had all happened. I couldn't deny that what I had just experienced. When you see your family running towards you crying, it made me realize, oh yes, I've been through something really terrible, but it's over now.
How have you been holding up since then, emotionally? You mentioned having had issues before with anxiety and difficulty with tough emotional situations.
Oddly, I've been saying to my friends, going to prison — and I do call it prison because there's nothing in my experience that seems different to what I imagine prison to be like — I've been saying to my friends that going to prison gives you a bit of perspective on life. I actually am finding a lot of my old anxieties don't seem so big anymore because it has shifted my perspective on a lot of things. I used to worry a lot if my friends or family really cared as much about me as maybe they claim, or if maybe it was a bit of a ruse, maybe they don't really like me as much as they let on, or maybe they think I'm a burden and all this. But when your friends and family band around you to help get you out of a situation like this, it's very hard to go on believing that maybe it's not real.
I've never felt more loved, in a way, than hearing on the phone my parents telling me how much they love me. My friends have made a WhatsApp group called Support Becky, they're all putting in information, they're all assigning themselves different admin roles. I had one friend who was in charge of setting up the GoFundMe, one friend who was always emailing the embassy, another friend who decided that the comic community might want to know what was going on. So she emailed the Thought Bubble team, which is a comic festival in the U.K., and some others: Broken Frontier, which is a comic review site here, and one I used to actually write articles for.
One friend managed to find one of the hosts I'd stayed with, even though I couldn't remember anything besides her first name. She lives in Portland, and he managed to find her and get her number, and she ended up coming to visit me in jail, which was very nice. He just decided that I needed a visitor, that I was probably going crazy in there. So he found someone I knew in America to come and see me. And she did come and see me — a host that I only met a month earlier, made a six-hour round trip to come and visit me in Tacoma.
The thing that happened was terrible. And I'm very sad thinking about the women still in there. But I'm also seeing my life in a new perspective, because I'm very happy that I can walk outside this building, that I'm in my friend's house right now, and I'm able to go outside and go in the garden, and that's amazing. That's great that I can do that. Some people can't do that. I couldn't do that for 19 days. I couldn't decide of my own volition, “I want to go outside now for a bit and get some fresh air.” Little things like that. Suddenly I've got a new appreciation for them.
You're working on a comic now about these experiences, and I'm wondering if you’ve been influenced at all by other comics about experiences of incarceration, or experiences of internment?
I haven't read any in that area. None that I've come across. I do read quite a lot about mental health and nonfiction. Zoe Thorogood, for example. I've read some about various different political issues. There's Persepolis, of course, but I don't think I've found one about this specific situation. I remember thinking at the time that there's no camera, there's no phones in this place. I'm able to draw this and witness this event that most people on the outside can't see. I felt obliged to document it because I was aware even then that I'd be given an insight into a world that a lot of people never get to see.
Even when I was in there, I had images of pages appearing to me, and I knew I wanted the other women’s stories to be a big part of it. So in my last week, when I had been warned that I'd be going home, I started intentionally going round to some people and quizzing them or interviewing them, I guess, a little bit about their story. I made this big table where in the first column I drew a portrait of the person, just a little cartoon. And then I had some other columns where I wrote their age, I wrote how long they'd been detained, I summarized their story and I wrote what they're waiting for next. For example, if they're waiting on a court date or if they're waiting for a first reply from ICE or what step they were in the process as far as they were aware. And I tried to communicate to these people that I wanted to put this in a comic when I was released so that I could get their consent for that. Some were scared for their name to be included. So I made a note of that because a lot of the time these people who didn't want their name included were asylum seekers who were worried about repercussions in their home country for family members who are still there.
I won't reveal their names, but they said their stories are fine to be included, they just want to be anonymous. I have about 30 of these little profiles that I want to definitely include in the comic because it's changed my perception of the people. When I was in America, I told you I was hearing stories of ICE raids, and I don't know who I was imagining these people to be who were being taken away. But being amongst these women and hearing their stories, it did not match whatever preconception I had had about who was being grabbed and locked up. These women did not deserve to be locked up.
You've advised other travelers not to come to the U.S., and I'm wondering if this has changed your impression of America as a whole, or about the world as a whole. Do you think about traveling the same way that you did before?
It has changed my view of America because I do not think it's a safe place to be right now. Obviously I thought it was safe, I went there on holiday. But now I would advise everyone to reconsider any holidays to America, both for their own safety and also because I wouldn't want to be giving any money to America right now based on what I am seeing in the news is happening, and the policies and actions that are being taken by the government. I would not choose to support the U.S. by giving any kind of tourism. I would not want to give any money to a place that is making these decisions.
But I don't think I'm put off traveling in general because, my general reason for traveling is that I always feel stronger having traveled somewhere and overcome. Normally it’s the little problems that come up, but this time, the big problem that came up while I was traveling. I never feel more capable as a human than when I am traveling around, and I never feel more connected to other people than when I'm traveling around. And I guess both of those things still applied in this situation, because I felt very, very quickly a strong connection to the other women that I was with in the facility. And having come through that, I definitely feel stronger.
tl;dr: Does anybody know of a site/API where I can find a list of books published by an author? Before you answer “just use Wikipedia/Goodreads/Amazon/openlibrary”, read on…
After tinkering with my bookiez.el package today, I naturally started to want to buy more books. I was thinking about implementing something that would alert me when authors I particularly like release something new, if that’s simple to implement.
So I was looking at (to take a random example) David Sedaris:
The last book I have is from 2018? He must have published something after that, but how to find out?
Because if you go to Goodreads and sort by publication year, you get this:
And there two things on the top there do indeed look like new books, and I bought them from Bookshop.org. But what are the rest of those things? Yes, indeed, they’re radio shows, and then a collection, and then… er… a Kindle essay, and then there’s…
OK, so I tried openlibrary.org, but it has the similar problems, as evidenced by the first screenshot up there. Among the 122 books Sedaris has published (apparently), there’s “A Carnival of Snackery Lib/E”, “A Carnival of Snackery”, “Carnival of Snackeries : Diaries”, “Carnival of Snackery : Diaries”, and finally of course, “Carnival of Snackery”.
I don’t know whether this phenomenon has a name… “The Tragedy Of The Pedantry?” You see this problem all the time, like on discogs. If you’re trying to buy all albums by Joe Jackson, you get an overview that starts with this:
The first two things are indeed his first two albums, but then you get an “album” by the BBC Transcription Service (these were vinyls they sent out to far-away broadcasting outposts like the BBC offices in Gibraltar, so that they could play some rockin’ Joe Jackson live to the people in Gibraltar — good work by the BBC). BUT I DIGRESS.
If only there was a button on the form where people submit data like this like “is this something you thing that reasonable people would consider an actual ‘new release’ by this person?” button. I know, that takes using common sense and having some taste (is a collected edition a “new release”? a translation? an illustrated edition?), so it’s basically impossible, but it sure would be nice to have a button when viewing these lists that says “hide effluvia”.
But the nerds at Wikipedia are so geeky — it’s not as apparent here, but if you look at somebody who does series, it’s almost impossible to see whether they’ve done any new books lately. As an example, C. J. Cherryh:
And that goes on and on, and you basically have to read the entire thing to see whether she’s done anything new lately.
I find all this not only annoying, but slightly bewildering: There’s readers that want to buy books, and they’re fans of certain authors, so they want to be reminded that there are new books when there are new books. And by “new books” all readers mean “has this author written a new book and it has been published?”, and usually nothing else.
If you manage to eventually find the “all books” for an author on Amazon, for instance, and manage to select “publication date”, you get this:
OK, English only…
What? Oh, there’s a 3 book collection set… and a kindle edition… OK, I don’t care about Kindle, I just want papery books:
GAAAH
So there is no way on Amazon to get it to list out new books by an author — they’d have to do the tagging I describe above, and obviously that’s not something a small startup like Amazon has the means to do.
Sorry for the lame joke, but they actually used to do this when they were a small startup — you could get a list of “works by” sorted by publication order, so that you can, you know, buy stuff.
And of course, just searching for “david sedaris” just gives you popular books…
Changing to “newest arrivals” gives you junk — OK, there’s two things in the first line by David Sedaris, but nothing that could be called “a new work by”.
So I’m just asking the Internet in general: Has anybody, somewhere, made a web site that lists works by authors in a way that can be used to check whether somebody has published a new book lately?
I’m guessing not, because that just seems totally impossible, but I thought I’d ask.
Oh, for giggles I tried ChatGPT:
Which starts off pretty reasonably…
But ends in 2003!? (Same with 4.5.)
After chatting a bit with it to list David Sedaris books, I got it to stop trying to divide things into sections, but it includes things like “Themes and Variations” that’s a Kindle essay, as well as “The Best Of Me” which is a compilation. But this doesn’t stop in 2003, at least.
LLMs are notoriously not very up-to-date, so it’s not ideal for the functionality I have in mind. And I don’t want to. But I’m guessing that’s going to be my best bet? I have to get a doctorate in prompt engineering first.
In the interest of full disclosure, the contact from Hiveworks Comics providing this press release is a colleague of one of the TCJ editors at their other job. - ed.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Hiveworks Comics is winding down operations over the course of 2025 to focus primarily on its web services: hosting, ads, and technical support for webcomic artists.
Its print and publishing division, which include producing, licensing, marketing, and distributing comics, will close. All comics for which Hiveworks has printing and publishing rights are being released back to their creators.
Hiveworks will complete fulfillment for several outstanding comic crowdfunding projects, after which its crowdfunding services will cease. Warehouse services for artists will also cease, and Hivemill, its managed storefront, will be limited to print-on-demand services and sale of products purchased wholesale from artists.
A clearance sale on many goods will run in Hivemill from mid-April through May 31 before arrangements are made to return remaining product to artists.
Hiveworks remains committed to helping artists share original, creator-owned webcomics with audiences across the world in the way they want and will continue operating its web services.
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