Mariko Tamaki

Tamaki's graphic novel collaboration with artist Rosemary Valero-O'Connell, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me was released in May 2019 by First Second Books. Freddy's rocky relationship with Laura leaves her heartbroken and neglectful of her true friends. In this queer coming-of-age story, Freddy learns to let go of a toxic relationship and value the people in her life who make her a better person.

In 6 November 2019 Tamaki came back to Marvel for a four-part mini-series called "Spider-Man & Venom: Double Trouble".

In 2017 she began writing novel adaptations of the Lumberjanes comic series.

In 2016 it was announced that Tamaki would be writing a new Hulk series starring She-Hulk for Marvel Comics, and the mini-series Supergirl: Being Super for DC Comics.

In 2014 Tamaki again collaborated with her cousin Jillian Tamaki, on the graphic novel This One Summer, published by Groundwood Books.

Skim won an Ignatz Award, a Joe Shuster Award and a Doug Wright Award in 2009, and was a nominee for the "Children's literature (text)" category at the 2008 Governor General's Awards. Tamaki was also awarded an Honour of Distinction by the Dayne Ogilvie Prize, a literary award for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writers in Canada, in 2012. This One Summer, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, was nominated for a 2014 Ignatz Award, and won the 2015 Michael L. Printz Award and a Caldecott Honor from the American Library Association. In 2016 she won the German Rudolph-Dirks-Award in the category Youth Drama / Coming of Age (for This One Summer). In 2019, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel as well as the Best Children's or Young Adult Book Award from the Harvey Awards. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me was also awarded the 2020 Walter Award in the Teen Category.

Skim, a collaboration with her cousin Jillian Tamaki, published in 2008 by Groundwood Books, is a graphic novel about a teenage girl and her romantic feelings towards her female teacher; the reciprocity of those feelings remains unclear in the text. The other central story is about the suicide of a classmate's ex-boyfriend who may have been gay. The text is fundamentally "about living in the moments of wrenching transition ...[and] the conflicting need to belong and desire to resist". Tamaki says she did not set out to "make a statement about queerness and youth": "Skim's in love, and kisses a woman, but heck, she's just a kid. She could go on to kiss many people in her future - some of them might be dudes, who knows? I think Skim is more a statement about youth, and the variety of strange experiences that can encapsulate." According to one reviewer, "the expressionistic fluidity of the black and white illustrations serves the purpose of pages of prose"; there is little plot and spare dialogue. Tamaki writes that artists such as Hergé, Igort and Vittorio Giardino as well as Asian art had an influence on her style but her storytelling was rooted in American comics like Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown, and Will Eisner. Skim was originally developed as a short play for Nightwood Theatre.

Tamaki published the novel Cover Me in 2000. It is a "poignant story about an adolescent coping with depression". Told in a series of flashbacks, it is about a teenager dealing with cutting and feeling like an outsider in school.

Mariko Tamaki was born in Toronto, Ontario. She is of mixed Japanese Canadian and Jewish Canadian descent. Mariko attended Havergal College, an all girls' secondary school. She studied English literature at McGill University, graduating in 1994.

Mariko Tamaki (born 1975) is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics. She has twice been named a runner-up for the Michael L. Printz Award.