Tito James

Tito W. James is a cosmopolitan comic creator who incorporates aesthetic traditions from across the globe. Tito’s goal is to create illicit entertainment that challenges, transports, and inspires young people.

Coco Fox

Coco Fox grew up doodling in Indiana. She has worked in film, graphic design, and just published her first middle grade graphic novel, Let’s Go, Coco!, with Harper Alley. She’s self-published a handful of punny zines and a very silly fortune telling deck. Her comics have been featured in Seven Days & Vermont Magazine, and three of her dinosaur illustrations are currently on display in The Indianapolis Children’s Museum. Coco graduated from CCS in 2020 and got her undergrad degree at Duke University. She loves witches, dinosaurs, and stories about friendship. On January 25th she will be playing Janet in the shadow cast production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at Lebanon Opera House.

Erika Moen

Erika Moen is a freelance cartoonist born June 25, 1983 and graduated with an Illustrated Storytelling self-designed degree from Pitzer College in 2006. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she has been a member of Helioscope Studio since 2008.

Having created comics for well over a decade, her work has been published by Oni, Dark Horse, Image, Villard and Scholastic, among many others.

In addition to creating comics, she also regularly teaches classes and guest lectures on the subject in high schools and colleges around the country.

She has been happily married to Matthew Nolan since October 2008.

Caroline Hu

Caroline Hu is an artist and educator with a PhD in biology and a love for visual storytelling. After years of spending her days at the lab bench and nights at the drawing desk, Caroline now joyfully dual wields both art and science as an assistant biology professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. There she has facilitated 20+ comics collaborations between art undergraduates and research scientists from all over the world. She is also currently illustrating her first nonfiction
graphic novel with Penguin Workshop.

Tara Booth

Tara Booth is an Ignatz Award Winning comic artist, illustrator and painter from Philadelphia. Tara’s candid autobiographical comics shed lightness and humor on issues related to mental health, addiction, and sexuality. Known for her painterly approach to comics, often using bright colors and dizzying patterns- Booth’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Vice, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Best American Comics. Tara loves to travel and hike with her two dogs.

Marlowe Lune

Marlowe Lune is a queer and trans illustrator based in Providence, Rhode Island. They create decadent and fantastical illustrations inspired by the art, fashion, and stories of centuries past. In addition to illustrating book covers, they run the Merry Blackbird Postcard Society on Patreon, and are currently at work on their debut graphic novel for Abrams Books.

Olivia Stephens

Olivia Stephens is a graphic novelist, illustrator, and writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her comics often utilize supernatural elements to explore grief, rage, and profound tenderness. Currently, Olivia is working on Darlin’ and Her Other Names, a werewolf-western-horror-romance comic that she self-publishes online. The first installment of Darlin’ and Her Other Names won the 2023 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Artist. Olivia has also won a Fellowship Award from Artist Trust and been awarded residencies at Tin House, Mineral School, Storyknife, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She earned her BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017.

Yasmeen Abedifard

Yasmeen Abedifard is an Iranian artist born in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently based in Oakland. Her work is centered around storytelling mediums, including comics, illustrations, and animation. She is currently teaching in the Comics BFA program at The California College of the Arts (CCA), and has taught various workshops at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley Art Studio, Sequential Artists Workshop, and Black Mountain Institute. Her work has been featured in various spaces, such as the SF Art Book Fair, the Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2727 California, and Jack Hanley Gallery. In 2023, she won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic for Death Bloom (pub. Lucky Pocket Press). She is part of the comics collective D.R.Y. with peers Daniel Zhou and Raul Higuera, aimed at fostering community and highlighting the Bay Area comics scene.

Alec Longstreth

Alec Longstreth has proudly self-published over 2,000 pages of his comics since 2002. 25 issues of his minicomic Phase 7 have been collected into seven books, two of which were translated into French and published by L’employé du Moi. Alec’s all ages webcomic Isle of Elsi has also been collected into two volumes. Over the years, Alec’s comics have won two Ignatz Awards, a Divisional Reuben Award from the National Cartoonist’s Society and have twice been nominated for Eisner Awards. Alec also works as freelance illustrator, animator, and digital colorist.

Mary Shyne

Mary Shyne is a Chicago-area native, who spent a decade in New York working in publishing before getting her MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies. She currently lives in the Bay Area where she works on all things Snoopy at the Schulz Studio. Her comics have appeared in The Nib, Electric Literature, and Solrad.

Pan Cooke

Pan Cooke is a writer and illustrator from Dublin, Ireland. He is best known for his social justice comics and illustrations, which have been widely shared across social media and focus on topics from police violence to mental health awareness. He has worked alongside Amnesty International on several campaigns and frequently collaborates with the activist group Campaign Zero. Pan combines his love of graphic storytelling with a passion for education and advocacy. His forthcoming debut graphic memoir Puzzled, which illustrates his experiences growing up with OCD, published in 2023 with Penguin Random House.

Liniers

Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Liniers (Ricardo Siri) became a daily cartoonist at 28 almost by accident, when other Argentine newspaper cartoonists had decamped to Spain at the nadir of a recession. He saw his role on the last page of La Nacion as offering a respite from dour news, but the strip’s whimsy and humanity quickly led Macanudo to expand to papers across Latin America, and eventually beyond to Europe and North America.

Three of Liniers’ children’s books have been published in the US, with Good Night, Planet, winning the comics industry Eisner Award for Best Publication For Early Readers in 2018. He currently lives in Vermont.

Kit Anderson

Kit Anderson is an independent cartoonist, comics editor, and print designer from Boulder, Colorado. She lives near Zürich and received her MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies in 2022. She’s published numerous short comics including Weeds (published by Parsifal Press in 2022, Ignatz Nominee for “Outstanding Story” 2023), and Their House (which was featured on The Rumpus and won a MICE minigrant in 2021). Her first short story collection, Safer Places was published with Avery Hill in 2024, as was her first graphic novel, Second Shift.

Evan Dahm

Evan Dahm lives in Queens, New York and has been making and self-publishing comics online and in print since 2006, including the fantasy-adventure comics Rice Boy, Vattu, and 3rd Voice. He’s also made several books with publishers, including theIsland Book series with First Second Books, and The Harrowing of Hell and The Last Delivery with Iron Circus Comics.

Melissa Mendes

Melissa Mendes grew up in rural Western Massachusetts, where she currently lives and works. She started making comics in 2002 at Hampshire College and got her MFA from The Center for Cartoon Studies in 2010. Melissa was the recipient of the 2010 Xeric comics self-publishing grant for her book Freddy Stories. In 2014, she began creating and self-publishing the Ignatz-nominated comic The Weight, now a graphic novel, inspired by her late grandfather’s life.

Farel Dalrymple

Farel Dalrymple is a creator of comic books and illustrated work: Sept ‘n’ Ember, 20202020, The Often Wrong, Proxima Centauri, It Will All Hurt, Pop Gun War,

The Wrenchies, and Delusional. Farel was a co-founder, co-editor, and contributor to the comic anthology, Meathaus, and worked as an artist collaborator on Palefire, Prophet, Omega the Unknown, Jenny Finn, Caper, and more recently The Terrific Teacups written by Rick Reminder. Farel Dalrymple lives in Portland, Oregon where he is currently producing ROBot TOD, an ongoing, fully watercolored comic book series.

Soph Franz

Soph Franz is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Portland, Oregon. Some works include: The Experts, Orange Thief, Slumber Party, What Is Wolf?, background art

for the animated feature Cryptozoo, and various large scale murals around the Pacific North West.

Tara Booth

Tara Booth is an Eisner and Ignatz Award-winning artist based in Philadelphia. Her autobiographical comics focus on mental health, addiction, and sexuality, often using bright colors and patterns. Her work has appeared in publications like The New York Times and Washington Post, and she has exhibited her art nationally and internationally.

Caitlin McGurk

Caitlin McGurk is the Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and Associate Professor at The Ohio State University.

She leads the education and outreach efforts at the library, organizes community events, curates exhibitions, works with artists, and mentors students who are inspired to study the rich history of comics. McGurk’s scholarship and exhibitions center around the work of women in comics, alternative and underground comics, and early American comic strips. Her recent exhibitions include Ladies First: A Century of Women’s Innovations in Comics and Cartoon Art; and Man Saves Comics: Bill Blackbeard’s Treasure of 20th Century Newspapers.

She has been interviewed multiple times on CBS Sunday Morning about her exhibitions, and her writing has appeared in publications including Journal of Lesbian Studies; Slate; The Comics Journal; Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society; and IDW Publishing’s Library of American Comics Essentials. Caitlin has also worked for The Center for Cartoon Studies’ Schulz Library, Marvel Comics, and serves on the council for the annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival. Her best-selling, Eisner-nominated book, Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund, was published by Fantagraphics Books in November 2024, and won the 2025 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book.

Marek Bennett

NH-based cartoonist, musician, and educator Marek Bennett leads discovery-based Comics Workshops for all ages throughout New England and the world beyond. His comics work includes the graphic novel series, The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby, as well as drawing, translating, & editing for The Most Costly Journey (2021) with the bilingual El Viaje Project. In September 2022, both books were featured at the National Book Festival in Washington DC.

Jules Sharpe

Jules Kang Sharpe is a cartoonist and risograph publisher in Providence, RI. They make comics about boyish lesbians and talking eels who are sometimes mean. They also publish a newspaper called The Pit, which they print in Providence. They are a member of Binch Press/Queer.Archive.Work, a publishing studio centering queer and trans artists of color. They are currently working as a background designer for an upcoming animated Netflix series.

Ben Wickey

Ben Wickey is a Massachusetts-born artist, writer, and animator who graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. He is one of the contributing illustrators of Alan Moore and Steve Moore’s The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, the illustrator of Ki Longfellow’s The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall, and the director of several stop-motion animated short films, including the award-winning The House of the Seven Gables. Since 2014, he has been providing animation for Christopher Seufert’s long-awaited documentary, Gorey, about author/illustrator Edward Gorey. In 2025, after a decade of development, he made his solo graphic novel debut with More Weight: A Salem Story. He lives in California with his beloved wife and cats.

Tillie Walden

Tillie Walden is a cartoonist and illustrator from Austin, Texas and a graduate from The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. Over the course of her time at CCS, she published three books with the London-based Avery Hill Publishing. Since then, she has published myriad graphic novels such as her autobiographical work Spinning, sci-fi epic On a Sunbeam, and Are You Listening?, a magical realism road trip story. Her latest work is the Clementine trilogy, for The Walking Dead, and a duology of graphic novels done with the musicians Tegan and Sara Quin. Currently, she is working on Charity and Sylvia in partnership with Vermont Humanities. She is the winner of multiple Eisner Awards as well as the LA Times Book Prize. She currently lives in Vermont with her family.

Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel’s comic stripDykes To Watch Out For became a countercultural institution among lesbians and discerning non-lesbians all over the planet. And her more recent, darkly humorous graphic memoirs about her family have forged an unlikely intimacy with an even wider range of readers.

Bechdel self-syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For for twenty-five years, from 1983 to 2008. The award-winning generational chronicle has been called “one of the pre-eminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period.” (Ms. magazine)

In 2006 she published Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Time magazine named it the Best Book of 2006. It was adapted into a musical by the playwright Lisa Kron and the composer Jeanine Tesori. It opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater on April 19, 2015, and won five Tony Awards, including “Best Musical.”

In her work, Bechdel is preoccupied with the overlap of the political and the personal spheres, the relationship of the self to the world outside. Her 2012 memoir Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama delved into not just her relationship with her own mother, but the theories of the 20th century British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Her most recent book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (May 2021), continues her investigation of the relationship between inside and outside, in this case the outside where she skis, bikes, hikes, and wanders in pursuit of fitness and, incidentally, self-transcendence.

Alison’s comics have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Granta. She has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships. She lives up a hill in Vermont.