The Black Schooner

Paul Buhle, David Lester, and Marcus Rediker have collaborated on three previous graphic novels, all published by Beacon Press: Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay (2021); Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic (2023); and Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741 (2024)

Paul Buhle, retired Senior Lecturer at Brown University, is the authorized biographer of Pan African giant C .L.R. James and radical historian William Appleman Williams. Since 2005 he has edited more than a dozen nonfiction graphic novels, including Studs Terkel’s Working (an adaptation of the totemic oral history), A Peoples History of the American Empire (an adaptation of Zinn), The Beats, and Red Rosa (Luxemburg). He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

David Lester illustrated the award-winning 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike (published in English, German and French editions). His poster of anti-war protester Malachi Ritscher was exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Forthcoming in 2025, Lester has a chapter in the anthology Partisans: A Graphic History of Anti-fascist Resistance (Between The Lines), edited by Paul Buhle and Raymond Tyler. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of numerous prize-winning books that have been translated into nineteen languages worldwide. He worked with director Tony Buba to make the documentary film Ghosts of Amistad, about the memory of the Amistad Rebellion of 1839 in Sierra Leone. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.