Fourth Round TCAF 2024 Featured Guests

Gene Luen Yang writes, and sometimes draws, comic books and graphic novels. He was named a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in 2016, and advocates for the importance of reading, especially reading diversely. His graphic novel American Born Chinese, a National Book Award finalist and Printz Award winner, has been adapted into an original series on Disney+. His two-volume graphic novel Boxers & Saints won the LA Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award Finalist. His nonfiction graphic novel, Dragon Hoops, received an Eisner award and a Printz honor. His other comics work includes Secret Coders (with Mike Holmes), The Shadow Hero (with Sonny Liew), and Superman Smashes the Klan and the Avatar: The Last Airbender series (both with Gurihiru). In 2016, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Stephanie Cooke is a writer based out of Toronto, Canada where she lives with her snuggly cat that she happens to be very allergic to. Some of her graphic novels include: The Racc Pack, ParaNorthern and Oh My Gods! Her YA debut, Pillow Talk, will be released in April 2024. Find more about her at stephaniecooke.ca.

Mel Valentine Vargas (They/Them) is a Queer Cuban-American comic artist and illustrator based in Chicago. They love to play farming sims, sing in Spanish, and eat gyoza with their friends. Vargas's work includes Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina, The OUT Side: Trans & Non-Binary Comics, and Pillow Talk by Stephanie Cooke.

Adam de Souza is a Vancouver based cartoonist. His works include the award winning online comic strip Blind Alley and the recently published graphic novel The Gulf through Tundra Books.  

Lawrence Lindell (he/they) is a cartoonist, educator, musician and artist from California. Lindell is known to focus on Blackness, mental health and queerness in his work. Lindell received his BFA in Digital Media with an emphasis in 2D animation/illustration from Otis College of Art and Design and his MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts. 

He is the creator of Blackward, a graphic novel published by Drawn and Quarterly and Buckle Up, a middle-grade graphic novel published by RH Graphic. He contributes to The New Yorker, SF Examiner, and Razorcake, and has been involved with DIY publishing for over a decade. His work has been featured in museums, and art exhibitions and nominated for the Believer Book Awards, Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics, GLAAD Media Awards, Lambda Literary Award, The Publishing Triangle: Jacqueline Woodson Award and the Broken Frontier Award. 

Lindell founded Laneha House with his spouse Breena Nuñez in 2020. They publish comics from themselves and cartoonists online through their Open Mic series. Their periodical series Laneha House has been nominated for the Broken Frontier Award and they are recipients of the CCS BIPOC Cartoonist Fund Grant. Through Laneha House he cofounded the Kinnard Awards in 2022 to honor pioneering Black queer cartoonist Rupert Kinnard and folks in the comics community. When he is not creating comics, music or touring, he is usually spending time with his spouse and kid, drinking coffee, and planning his next few projects. 

Breena Nuñez is a cartoonist from the Bay Area and resides in San Francisco, CA. Their work has been known to share lived experiences with being a queer AfroSalvadoran-Guatemalan person, encountering the awkwardness of racism, and some self-deprecating humor. Nowadays Breena creates comic strips archiving her journey into motherhood while teaching comics through an Ethnic Studies lens. 

Breena’s comics are primarily self-published as zines through the family run small press she co-founded with her spouse, Laneha House. You will also find some comics in other publications such as The New Yorker: Daily Shouts and The Nib, as well as in anthologies like Tales From La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, Drawing Power (Eisner Award Winner 2020), and Be Gay, Do Comics! (Ignatz Award Winner 2020).

Christine (Diễm Uyên) Chung is a Vietnamese-Canadian artist who works on storyboards for animated TV and feature films by day and sketches up the plans for another world by night. She is interested in stories that live in the space between our connection to our planet, our communities and to ourselves — striving to find collective triumph in our darkest of places. Christine lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family —and a few blocks away from her childhood friend Salwa. Viewfinder is her debut book.

Salwa Majoka is a Pakistani-Canadian illustrator and 2D artist for the animation industry. She has worked on both TV cartoons and in film with a focus on painting and color design — the two things she enjoys the most about visual storytelling. Salwa has a special love and curiosity for the many marvels of the natural world, outer space and the deep sea, which often find their way into her work. She has known her co-author, Christine, since middle school, and this is her first book. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her family.

Gary Clement is a Canadian artist, cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He’s the author and illustrator of several children’s books, among them The Great Poochini, which earned Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award in Children’s Literature—Illustration, and most recently illustrated My Winter City, written by James Gladstone. His illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and many other newspapers and magazines across North America. K Is in Trouble is his debut graphic novel.

Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. Her two graphic novels, Anya's Ghost and Be Prepared, were published by First Second, and her debut picture book Leave Me Alone! was a 2017 Caldecott Honor book. She’s also worked in story on several animated films, including Coraline and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her dog Omar, a mere two hours from the sea.