TCAF is excited to share the first round (of many) featured guests attending TCAF 2022: Tillie Walden, Rumi Hara, Robyn Smith, Zviane, Emma Hunsinger, and Jamila Rowser!
TILLIE WALDEN
Tillie Walden is a cartoonist and illustrator from Austin, TX. She is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies, where she now teaches. As of 2022, she has published three graphic novellas with the London based Avery Hill Publishing and three with First Second Books, including her Eisner Award-winning memoir Spinning. She currently lives in Lebanon, New Hampshire with her cat Stan.
RUMI HARA
Rumi Hara was born in Kyoto, Japan, and started printing her comics on a tiny home printer while working as a translator in Tokyo in 2010. After receiving an MFA in illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design, Rumi moved to New York in 2014, where she now lives and works as an illustrator and comics artist. Her comics series Nori was first self-published as minicomics and was nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2018 before being published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2020. Her most recent book is The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories (May 2022).
ROBYN SMITH
Robyn Smith is a Jamaican cartoonist known for illustrating DC Comics’ Nubia: Real One (written by L.L. McKinney) and her mini-comic The Saddest Angriest Black Girl in Town. She has an MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies and has worked on comics for College Humor and The Nib.
ZVIANE
There was this one time when Zviane listened to piano and said: “wow piano is cool I want to play piano too!” So she started playing piano. And then there was this one time when Zviane heard a fugue and said: “wow fugues are cool I want to write fugues too!” So she started writing fugues. And there was that one time when she saw an animated film and said: “wow animated films are cool I wanna make some too!” So she made an animated film. And one day she sat down and read a comic book.
EMMA HUNSINGER
Emma Hunsinger is a cartoonist from Connecticut. She started her career making New Yorker gags before getting her MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Her short comic "How To Draw a Horse" appeared in pages of the New Yorker and was nominated for an Eisner. She currently lives in the Upper Valley where she spends most of her time trying to stay warm.
JAMILA ROWSER
Jamila Rowser is an award-winning writer who enjoys creating comics for Black women. She publishes comics by and for women of color and non-binary people of color through Black Josei Press. Jamila was named Best Writer in the 2021 Broken Frontier Awards, received Oolites 2021 Creators Grant, and was featured, along with Robyn Smith, in Adweek’s 2021 Creative 100 as a creator to follow. Jamila lives in Miami but reps the Bronx.