This collection of self-portraits--memories simply and beautifully rendered--tell a story of self-awareness and coming-of-age. Each is a page from Jesse Lee Kercheval’s recently released graphic memoir, French Girl, and her upcoming new graphic memoir, Household Gods.

At age 64, Madison poet and novelist Jesse Lee Kercheval picked up a pencil set and started to draw. In her first solo exhibition, “Drawn Lives,” dozens of Kercheval’s pastel works are on display at E...