Special Guests and Featured Creators

  • Benjamin Passmore

    2025 Keynote Presenter

    Ben Passmore is the author and illustrator of the comics Your Black Friend and Other Strangers (2018) and the Eisner Award-winning Sports Is Hell (2020). His latest graphic novel, Black Arms to Hold You Up, follows obscure histories of armed Black rebellion.

    https://www.patreon.com/daygloayhole
    https://www.instagram.com/daygloayhole

  • Julianna Brazill

    2025 Poster Artist

    Julianna is an illustrator and comic artist with a penchant for animals, pastries, and anything vintage. You might recognize her work from her bi-weekly comic in Vermont’s favorite newspaper, Seven Days! When she’s not drawing, you can find her wandering the great outdoors, petting any number of cats, laughing loudly, or cleaning and organizing everything.

    www.juliannabrazill.com

  • 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. 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.

    https://www.instagram.com/ben_wickey/

  • 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. Her comics are inspired by biological phenomena, scientific exploration, and healthcare. Caroline's first graphic novel, a middle grade biography of Jacques Cousteau with author Ned Wolfe, is coming out this fall from Penguin Workshop.


    www.hudrewthis.com

  • Christine Tyler Hill

    Christine Tyler Hill is a multi-disciplinary artist, naturalist, cyclist, and crossing guard. Her work is inspired by awe: for the natural world and its lessons; for the organizers and thinkers guiding us towards the world we need; for the extraordinary beauty of the mundane; for our capacity to hold and be many different things at once. She makes comics and zines to share her awe with people.
    She lives and works in Burlington, Vermont, where she gardens, rides bikes with friends, swims, compulsively moves furniture and art around her weird little house, and makes dinner with people she loves as much as possible.

    www.christinetylerhill.com

  • Dan Mazur

    Dan Mazur has recently completed Will Eisner: a Comics Biography, with collaborator Stephen Weiner. His previous graphic novels are Lunatic (2020) and Hannabell Hobb and Her Horrible Heads (2021). His comics have appeared in numerous anthologies. His history book, Comics, A Global History: 1968 to the Present (2014, co-written with Alexander Danner) has been translated into seven languages. As a screenwriter, his credits include Brave New World (1998), Night of The Scarecrow (1995) and Virtual Nightmare (2000), as well as uncredited writing on John Carpenter’s Vampires and K-9. He is co-founder of MICE, the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo and the Boston Comics Roundtable.

    danmazurcomics.com

  • Dave Ortega

    Dave Ortega writes and draws comics about the intersection between personal histories and official histories. His graphic novel, Días de Consuelo, is about his grandmother's early life in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. He teaches comics at Lesley University and in workshops throughout the metro Boston area. His work is in the collection of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

    https://www.daveortegadraws.com/

  • Eleri Harris

    Eleri Harris (she/her) is an Eisner award-winning cartoonist, journalist and editor working on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country in Australia’s national capital. Her non-fiction history, science and reportage comics have been exhibited and published all over the world. Best known as the former Features Editor at comics website and magazine, The Nib, Eleri is also the author of the picture book, A Loo of One’s Own and the co-author of Making Nonfiction Comics with Shay Mirk. She loves drawing tiny pictures in her studio at Gorman Arts Centre, playing make-believe with her kids and walking in the bush.

    https://eleriharris.com/

  • Kayla E.

    Kayla E. is an award-winning Texas-born artist of Mexican American descent. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She is the co-founder and former President of Nat. Brut Inc., a non-profit that produces an art and literary magazine, of which she was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she served as the Art Director for the Harvard Lampoon. Precious Rubbish, her graphic novel debut, is a work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children’s comics. Kayla lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs.

    https://www.preciousrubbish.com/

  • Lindsey Leigh

    Lindsey Leigh is an illustrator and comic artist based in Somervile, MA. Her work is inspired by weird and wonderful aspects of the natural world and she believes strongly in the power of art to communicate scientific ideas. She is the author and illustrator of a series of nonfiction children’s books for Penguin Workshop about unusual animals, including "The Deep! Wild Life at the Ocean’s Darkest Depths", "The Dark!, Wild Life in the Mysterious World of Caves" and "The Dirt! Wild Life Under the Soil’s Surface".

    https://www.linseedling.com/

  • Ned Wolfe

    Ned Wolfe (he/him) is a queer author and artist whose subjects are heroes, health and history. Ned delights in making history accessible through comics. His publications include the GLAAD and GAYMING award winning anthology Young Men in Love (A Wave Blue World), the hosting book Victorian Parlour Games: A Modern Host’s Guide to Classic Fun for Everyone (Chronicle Books) and Who Discovered How to Breathe Underwater? Jacques Cousteau (Penguin Workshop) with Caroline Hu. Ned swore an oath to protect the Bodleian Library and he takes that very seriously.

    Nedwolfe.com

  • Shay Mirk

    Shay is one of the creators of the new book Making Nonfiction Comics: A Guide for Graphic Narrative. They worked as a journalist before turning to creating comics and becoming an editor for beloved comics publication The Nib. Shay is the publisher of nonfiction comics press Crucial Comix and a prolific zine-maker based in Portland, Oregon.

    https://www.crucialcomix.com/

  • Stephen Weiner

    Stephen Weiner has been writing about graphic novels since 1992 and spearheaded the movement to bring graphic novels into public libraries. His books include: 100 Graphic Novels for Public Libraries, The Will Eisner Companion (with N.C. Christopher Couch) Will the Real Will Eisner Please Stand Up & Other Adventures in Comics, The 101 Best Graphic Novels, and many more. His novel, Briandigo's Dagger, is available from Haverhill House Press. He lives outside of Boston.

Exhibitors