Lucy Bellwood
Lucy Bellwood is a professional adventure cartoonist and author of the graphic novel Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea. Her newest project, 100 Demon Dialogues, will be arriving this spring in time for the convention! Lucy specializes in traveling the world and bringing back tales of unconventional derring-do in visual form. She has covered two accounts of whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon, sailing aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world, and mapping the ocean floor between Guam and Oahu aboard the research vessel Falkor.
Lucy also contributes comics journalism to The Nib, investigating issues of environmentalism, gender politics, and social change. She is an international teacher, lecturing on comics and the Internet, the economics of being a independent creator, and best practices for bringing history to life in modern classrooms.
She lives in Portland, Oregon and works out of Helioscope, the largest collection of freelance comics professionals in North America. Find out more at lucybellwood.com, or say hello on Twitter @LuBellwoo.
Vera Brosgol
Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. She studied animation at Sheridan College, and spent ten years at Laika Inc. in Portland, Oregon drawing storyboards for feature animation. Now she makes books.
Her first graphic novel, Anya’s Ghost, was published in 2011 by First Second Books. Her first picture book, Leave Me Alone!, was published in 2016 by Roaring Brook Press and was a Caldecott Honor recipient.
Vera’s latest graphic novel, Be Prepared, will debut at our convention this spring!
Seth Boyer
Seth Boyer is a songwriter from Alaska who turned into a ghost and floated to Seattle a few years ago. He currently haunts dive bars across the country making sad people feel validated and less alone with songs about also being sad.
One day he will live on an island full of dogs. Dog Island.
Marian Call
Singer-songwriter Marian Call lives in Alaska and has toured all fifty states with her music. Marian’s tenth album, “Standing Stones,” was released in 2017 and her music was recently featured on an episode of “Chance,” starring Hugh Laurie.
Scott Campbell
Scott C. is a maker of paintings, illustrations, comics, kid’s books and video games. He studied illustration at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, focusing on comic and children’s book illustration. Soon after graduating, he began at Lucas Learning as concept artist on children’s video games. Four years later, he joined Double Fine productions as Art Director on such games as the critically acclaimed Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Alongside this career in games, he has published numerous comics and created paintings that have appeared in galleries and publications around the world. Some of his most notable projects include the Great Showdowns series, Igloo Head and Tree Head series, Double Fine Action Comics, Hickee Comics, the children’s book’s Zombie In Love and East Dragon, West Dragon. The book Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C. collects many of his paintings over the past few years. Scott lives in New York City.
Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff is the author and illustrator of the generally well-regarded Delilah Dirk series of adventure graphic novels, the first of which, The Turkish Lieutenant, is a New York Times Bestseller and a nominee for Eisner, Harvey, and Shuster awards. The second volume, The King’s Shilling, was published in 2016 and Disney has acquired the feature film rights for the series. Yay Tony!
Tony hails from Vancouver, BC, where he is a twelve-year veteran of the city’s animation industry.
Lucas Elliott
Lucas Elliott is the Alaskan Illustrator of the Graphic Novel & Movie, MOOSE, written by Chad (Tundra Comics) and Darin Carpenter.
Lucas illustrates outstanding mermen and has worked for IDW on their TMNT Amazing Adventures comic, Blind Ferret Entertainment, The Gutters and Non-Playable Character.
Originally hailing from the far north land of Santa, North Pole, Lucas currently resides in Anchorage, with his wife and their canine companion.
Ben Hatke
Ben Hatke wrote and illustrated Zita the Spacegirl, Little Robot and Mighty Jack. He has also published comics stories in the Flight Anthology as well as Flight Explorer. In addition to writing and drawing comics, he also paints in the naturalist tradition and, occasionally, performs one-man fire shows. Hatke lives and works in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife and their boisterous pack of daughters.
Georgina Hayns
Georgina Hayns is Creative Supervisor of Puppet Fabrication at Laika. George has overseen puppet fabrication for The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman, Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings. She has been involved in all aspects of puppet fabrication for stop-motion films for over twenty years.
Prior to joining LAIKA in 2006, George worked on Corpse Bride.
Her career began in the UK where she supervised children’s television series and commercials, including HIT Entertainment’s Bob the Builder and the Lipton Brisk Tea adverts. She also worked on animated feature films including Mars Attacks! and shorts including the Oscar-nominated Periwig Maker.
Jon Klassen
Jon Klassen is a Canadian-born author/illustrator. He has written and illustrated three picture books of his own and illustrated many other author’s texts. His own books are called I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat and We Found A Hat. Highlights of his illustrated books are Sam & Dave Dig A Hole by Mac Barnett, The Dark by Lemony Snicket and his latest is The Wolf, The Duck & The Mouse also by Mac Barnett. His books have won a Caldecott medal and two Caldecott honors and other international awards.
Before working in books he studied animation at Sheridan College in Canada and worked at Dreamworks Feature studios in storyboarding and production illustration for films including How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda, and at Laika Studios as a production illustrator / set designer on their film Coraline.
He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and pretty new son.
Molly Lewis
Molly Lewis is a musician and comedian who is known for her ukulele playing and song writing. Her most recent album, Thanksgiving vs. Christmas, is an original musical about the magic of Thanksgiving.
Dylan Meconis
Dylan Meconis is a writer, cartoonist and designer from Portland, Oregon.
Her books include Bite Me!, Family Man, Outfoxed, and the forthcoming Queen of the Sea. Her work has also appeared in Bitch Planet, The Nib, Feminist Frequency, and more. She studied history and literature in college (not art!) and likes to create work that challenges our ideas about the lives of extremely dead people.
Dylan has also helped a lot of organizations turn piles of complicated information into cool maps, infographics, and comics. She loves teaching and public speaking, where she focuses on introducing people to unusual new perspectives and tools for creative thinking.
She’s also a member of Helioscope, the largest studio of comics professionals in North America.
Ryan North
Ryan North is a New York Times bestselling author and cartoonist. He is the author of the choose-your-own-path Shakespeare adaptation To Be or Not To Be (which became Kickstarter’s most-funded publishing project when it launched) and its sequel, Romeo and/or Juliet.
Ryan also writes the popular webcomic Dinosaur Comics, the critically acclaimed Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic for Marvel Comics, and he wrote the first thirty-five issues of Adventure Time, for which he won an Eisner Award. That’s like the Oscars of comics! There’s a gala and everything. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Jenn, and their dog, Noam Chompsky.
Molly Ostertag
Molly Ostertag is the author and illustrator of The Witch Boy from Scholastic, as well as the illustrator of Strong Female Protagonist (Top Shelf) and Shattered Warrior (First Second). She also works on Star Vs. The Forces of Evil at Disney TV Animation. She lives in Los Angeles with her girlfriend, two cats, and an old man who was turned into a dog by a witch.
Jeremy Spake
As head of the armature department at Laika, Jeremy Spake oversees the design and construction of the articulated metal skeletons inside the stop-motion puppets. He studied graphic design and jewelry and metalsmithing at Georgia State University, earning his BFA in 2004. He relocated to Portland in 2006 to join the Coraline production, followed by ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings.
Jeremy also forges beautiful handmade knives.
Raina Telgemeier
Raina Telgemeier is the author and illustrator of the graphic novels Smile, Drama, and Sisters, all #1 New York Times bestsellers. She also adapted and illustrated four graphic novel versions of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-sitters Club series, and has contributed short stories to many anthologies.
Raina’s accolades include two Eisner Awards, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, a Stonewall Honor, and many Best Of and Notable lists. Her newest graphic novel is Ghosts. Raina lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
C. Spike Trotman
C. Spike Trotman is the founder, owner and editor of Iron Circus Comics, the largest comics publisher in Chicago! She publishes award-winning, best-selling and critically-acclaimed books and has raised over one million dollars through Kickstarter for her many projects. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and launched the award winning webcomic, Templar, Arizona in 2005.
Spike edits the Smut Peddler anthology which features erotic comics by women, for women and is the author of Poorcraft, a plucky comic guide to living frugally.