Tessa Hulls in Residence

Kilachand Honors College is proud to present award-winning author and artist Tessa Hulls as its fall 2026 Person-in-Residence. Hulls is best known for her groundbreaking graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts, which received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir and Autobiography. Blending visual art and narrative, Hulls’ work explores intergenerational trauma, resilience, and the intersections of identity, history, and mental health.

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Boston University and Kilachand Honors College strive to be accessible, inclusive, and diverse in our facilities, programming, and academic offerings. Your experience at our events is important to us. If you have a disability, require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason, please contact Megan Kagstrom (mjwest@bu.edu) by September 21, 2026 to discuss your needs.

Tessa Hulls

Author and multidisciplinary artist

Tessa Hulls is an artist/writer/adventurer illuminating the connections between the present and the past. Her graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts explores the reverberations of her Chinese grandmother’s escape from the Communist regime and her subsequent mental illness. Her work addresses racial justice, the immigrant experience, generational trauma, mental health, the creative process, and the surprising feminist history of the bicycle.  Her graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts has earned the Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for First Book, the Eisner Award, the Washington State Book Award, the 2024 Libby Award and was named a Best Book of 2024 by Time, Forbes, NPR, the Minnesota Star Tribune, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Chicago Public Library and others.

Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, 2024

View a sample of the prologue of Feeding Ghosts, “Water Has A Perfect Memory”:

Meet our Student Facilitators

A Kentucky native, Jennifer Nguyen is a current junior at Boston University studying Electrical Engineering. She is involved as a BU Study Abroad Ambassador, Undergraduate Researcher, and Global House resident. During the past spring semester, she studied abroad in France through the BU Grenoble Engineering program. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys thrifting, music, and museum-hopping.

Originally from Hawai’i, Miya Peterson is a junior in the Kilachand Honors College studying International Relations and Environmental Analysis and Policy with a minor in Japanese Language and Literature. On campus, Miya is involved in Delta Phi Epsilon and Epsilon Eta, where she serves on both Executive Boards as Professional Development Chair. Off campus, Miya works at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, where she creates state environmental policy and environmental models, something she also hopes to do after graduation. Miya’s hobbies include crocheting, hiking, and art.