Ready for another round of esteemed guests? We sure are! And there are still more to come.
Victoria Ying is an author and artist living in Los Angeles. She started her career in the arts by falling in love with comic books, which eventually turned into a career working in animation and graphic novels. She loves Japanese curry, putting things in her shopping cart online and taking them out again, and hanging out with her dopey dog. Her film credits include Frozen, Moana, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Paperman. She is the illustrator of the DC Comics graphic novel Diana: Princess of the Amazons and the author and illustrator of her original graphic novels City of Secrets and Hungry Ghost. @victoriaying
Lorenz Peter was born in Montreal, Quebec, and grew up in northern Alberta in the 1970s and 80s. After a short stint in art school there, he began to self-publish comics in the 1990s amidst a wave of zine makers in Toronto and Vancouver. He settled in Toronto in the late ’90s and took on jobs as a telephone surveyor, a subway courier, a waiter, a muralist, a bookstore receiver, a caterer, a record shop owner, and a set painter, to name a few. Most of these experiences end up in his semi-autobiographical stories. He was awarded the Doug Wright award for best-emerging talent for his novel Dark Adaptation in 2005. His 5th book, On Vinyl, was nominated for a prize at Montreal Expozine 2018. Moon Boots is his 6th graphic novel. @lps_lps_toronto
Joy San is an illustrator and comic artist based in Canada. Her work features a lot of horror and bizarre themes that straddle the line between disturbing and funny. She also loves to create autobio comics and zines. Her latest book, Sugar and Other Stories, is a collection of short horror comics. In her spare time, she films vlogs on YouTube about her life as an artist, food lover, and sticker hoarder. @snarkytuna
Rina Ayuyang was born and raised in Pittsburgh. She was always inspired by the Sunday newspaper funnies and slice-of-life tales. Her short stories have been nominated for the Ignatz and Eisner awards and she has been honored with a MoCCA Arts Festival Awards of Excellence silver medal. Her comics have appeared in Mutha Magazine and The Comics Journal. She is also the publisher of the micro comics imprint, Yam Books. Her first book was Whirlwind Wonderland. Her latest book with D+Q is The Man in the McIntosh Suit. Ayuyang lives in Oakland, CA with her husband and son. @rinayay
Megan Kelso has been drawing comics for over 30 years. In 2007, she was invited by The New York Times to serialize her "Watergate Sue" comic as part of the weekly "Funny Pages" feature. In 2019, she was selected for a public art commission for Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Her books include The Squirrel Mother (2006), Artichoke Tales (2010), Queen of the Black Black (2011), and Who Will Make the Pancakes: Five Stories (2022). She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and daughter. @megangirlhero
Zainab Akhtar rose to prominence writing about comics via her blog, Comics & Cola, and other publications such as The Guardian, Time Out, AV Club, The Fader, and more. In 2016 she founded independent publishing imprint, ShortBox, in addition to creating Eisner and Angouleme award-nominated magazine, Critical Chips, that same year. In 2021, she developed the ShortBox Comics Fair, an innovative, annual, all-digital comics festival, accessible to creators and readers worldwide. She lives in Yorkshire with her cat, Maxy. @shortbox_comic
Joe Kessler is a cartoonist and co-founder and art director at Breakdown Press, a London-based comics publisher. His book Windowpane won the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for First Comic Book in 2020. @joebaskervillekessler
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) celebrates the comics medium and advocates for their literary and artistic merit. We seek to center the creators of these works in their broad and diverse voices through our hybrid exhibition, programming, and other festival activities. This year, TCAF will take place at the Toronto Reference Library from April 28th - 30th. There will also be a digital marketplace and digital events from April 21st - May 7th. As always, tickets for TCAF and related TCAF events are FREE. Some pre-registration is required for online activities and will be announced beforehand.
If you want to be a part of the magic this year, consider volunteering for TCAF 2023! Sign up here: https://forms.gle/agiY1JLuzAJe4GYJ7
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