What’s the Story Behind ‘The Boy With the Leaking Boot’?

Josie Psimer is a cartoonist who makes comics for middle-grade readers featuring young characters navigating friendships and coming of age. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023, with an emphasis in comics and print media. She graduated in May from the Center for Cartoon Studies with an MFA in cartooning. Find more of her work online at behance.net/josiepsimer or on Instagram: @llamics. More by Josie Psimer

Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous regional and national awards for his features, profiles and investigative stories and had his work picked up by international news outlets. He was the first journalist to shine a light on the thousands of undocumented workers in Vermont’s dairy... More by Ken Picard