M.S. Harkness’s bold, precise black-and-white cartooning and eye for storytelling in TIME UNDER TENSION invites the reader in, while her sharp wit and naturalist ear as a writer takes it away from there. Never didactic, always real, Time Under Tension is a spirited and assured work of graphic memoir.

Time Under Tension is a smart, funny, no bullshit work of autobiography, a story of searching for dignity in a world that rarely affords it and taking agency of adulthood in the face of so many easy excuses not to.

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M.S. Harkness is an American cartoonist known for her graphic memoirs Time Under Tension (Fantagraphics, 2023) Desperate Pleasures (Uncivilized, 2020) and Tinderella (Kilgore Books, 2018) and various self-published mini-comics. Her work is an incisive bildungsroman of growing up poor, marked by sexual trauma and various other indignities. Her cartooning is rendered in stark black & white, tending toward forceful graphics that blend contemporary animation and traditional cartooning styles.

Born in Carney, Oklahoma, Harkness currently resides in Columbus, Ohio where she occasionally teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Comics from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2017, studying under Kevin Huizenga. A weightlifter for many years, Harkness is also an NASM CPT and works part-time as a Personal Trainer.