Born in London and raised in Wales, Carol Swain is one of the UK's foremost comics creators, whose comic stories and graphic novels have been translated into 15 languages. Dubbed "The Raymond Carver of comics" by Time Out magazine, Carol's many admirers include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, UK Comics Laureate Bobby Joseph, and Watchmen and V for Vendetta creator Alan Moore, who wrote the foreword to Carol's acclaimed graphic novel Foodboy.

   Carol's father was an architect, her mother an antiques dealer who once took her to the famous Greenham Common protests. After a spell at art school in Stoke-on-Trent, Carol moved back to London. Inspired by the punk ethos of DIY, she began self-publishing her comic Way Out Strips, while contributing stories to various comics journals worldwide, and serving as colourist on the controversial graphic novel Skin. Way Out Strips was eventually picked up by America’s Fantagraphics Books, who would go on to publish Carol's subsequent graphic novels Invasion of the Mind Sappers, Foodboy, Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock’n’roll Life (a collaboration with her partner Bruce Paley), and Gast. Considered by many to be her finest work to date, Gast is a coming-of-age story in which a young English girl  investigates the suicide of a reclusive, cross-dressing Welsh farmer by seeking out those who knew him best, though it's his dogs and sheep who have the most to say. Gast has since been optioned for a short film by the French director Frédéric Bayer Azem, and was the subject of a doctoral thesis by Alice Vernon of Aberystwyth University entitled "Exploring Identity, Landscape and Language in Carol Swain’s Gast."

    In 2007, pages from Carol’s comics were included in an exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery entitled Cult Fiction, alongside works by the likes of Robert Crumb, Joe Sacco, Dan Clowes, and Raymond Pettibon. Her work has also been exhibited at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum. 

  In 2009, Dark Horse published a career-spanning anthology of Carol's work entitled Crossing the Empty Quarter. 

    In 2013, Carol was a panellist at the Cork International Short Story Festival, along with Etgar Keret, participating in a discussion of the graphic novel as an art form and its relation to mainstream fiction.

    Carol lives in Pembrokeshire with her partner and dog, who seems to have a lot to say. She is currently working on a new graphic novel tentatively entitled Mwnci Swit (Welsh for Monkey Suit), which is set in Llanparc, the fictional Welsh town in which several of her stories are based. 

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