Over the past fifteen years, Alison McCreesh has extensively travelled around the Arctic and sub-Arctic and contemporary day-to-day life in the North is a theme that carries through her creative work. Alison currently lives in Yellowknife where she creates comics and illustrations surrounded by her two dogs and three small children. Alison’s past books include Degrees of Separation: A Decade North of 60, the award-winning graphic novel Ramshackle: A Yellowknife Story, as well as the travelogue Norths: Two Suitcases and a Stroller around the Circumpolar World.
Seth is the cartoonist behind the comic book series Palookaville, which started in the stone age as a pamphlet and is now a semi-annual hardcover. His comics have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Best American Comics, and McSweeneys Quarterly, and he is the designer for several classic comics reprint series, notably collections of work by Charles Schulz, John Stanley, and Doug Wright. Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario, with his wife Tania and their two cats in an old house he has named "Inkwell's End."
Anita Kunz is an acclaimed illustrator and painter whose work has graced the covers of the New Yorker, Time, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and many other mass circulation periodicals. She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Canada by the National Post. She was the first woman and the first Canadian to have a solo show at the Library of Congress. She has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada. She lives in Toronto and her two newest books with Fantagraphics are Striking a Pose: A Handy Guide to the Male Nude and Another History of Art.
David Lapp is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and the University of Western Ontario. He has been teaching cartooning at the Art Gallery of Ontario for over twenty years. Dave has created three graphic novels, Drop In, Children of the Atom, and People Around Here, which have been published by Conundrum Press. Dave’s work was chosen for the Best American Comics series for 2010, 2011, and 2016. His work has also been nominated for an Ignatz and a Doug Wright award.
Geneviève Bigué is an illustrator and comic artist based in Montreal. With a formation in Traditional Animation (Cégep du Vieux Montréal) and Graphic Design (UQÀM), she now works in many fields, such as books, advertising and the cultural scene. In 2022, she published her first graphic novel as an author, Parfois les lacs brûlent (When the Lake Burns). Her book has won many awards, including the 2023 Prix des libraires du Québec. It was also nominated for the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Awards in Young People’s Literature – Illustrated Books (French).
Christopher Twin has been doing freelance illustration and comic work for close to a decade. He was self-taught from an early age and took correspondence courses. In 2018 he enrolled on the Fine Art program at Grant MacEwan University to advance his practice as well as to explore other mediums. His self-directed work is usually narrative driven and consists of stories about journeys of self-discovery and stories in the Horror and/or Science fiction genres. Christopher’s work is inspired by social/cultural divides, alternative philosophies/religions, and life as a mixed-race person. He was born and raised on the Swan River First Nations reservation in northern Alberta and now lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta.
Kirsten Hatfield is a queer, chronically ill, disabled artist working and living on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations. Her multidisciplinary approach to creating art books and comics is largely informed by her background in fine art, painting and abstract expressionism, often resisting conventional formats and linear narrative. Her most recent work has focused on exploring ideas around her experience with illness, isolation, grief and ableism using both representational and abstract imagery and language in a variety of materials and formats.