About Quan Zhou
Quan Zhou (Algeciras, 1989) is a multifaceted self-taught artist, speaker, podcaster, and graphic novelist. She held the 2024 Honorary Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at New York University and was a top five finalist for the 2025 Princess of Girona Awards in the Arts category. Zhou’s work explores the intersections of identity, migration, and cultural hybridity. Born and raised in southern Spain to Chinese parents, she brings a unique transnational perspective to her storytelling and social commentary. After completing her studies in Madrid and graduating in Graphic Communication from the U.K., she began publishing graphic narratives that have since marked a turning point in the representation of immigrant experiences in Spanish popular culture.
Her debut, Gazpacho Agridulce: Una autobiografía chino-andaluza (Astiberri, 2015), was groundbreaking for its candid depiction of growing up as a daughter of immigrants in Spain. It was followed by Andaluchinas por el mundo (2017) and Gente de aquí, Gente de allí (2020), a graphic essay on migration, privilege, and the politics of belonging. Her most recent graphic novel, La Agridolce Vita (2023), continues to blend humor, memory, and political reflection. Beyond graphic literature, her podcast Movidas Varias, produced by Plan H Media and distributed by Eldiario.es, offers a powerful platform for minoritized voices across Spain and Latin America.
As an artist and speaker, she has been invited to collaborate with many prestigious institutions in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Zhou has lectured on race, identity, and diasporic narratives in Spain, the U.S., the U.K., China, Taiwan, and Colombia. Her work has also been featured in media outlets including Vogue, Píkara Magazine, El País, and Eldiario.es.
Scholarly discussions of her work have appeared in The Hispanic Journal, Spanish Graphic Narratives: Recent Developments in Sequential Art (Palgrave, 2020), and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies (Routledge, 2020).