Small Press Expo Announces First Time Guests Brandon Graham, Emily Carroll, Jules Feiffer and Lynda Barry

Small Press Expo Announces First Time Guests Brandon Graham, Emily Carroll, Jules Feiffer and Lynda Barry For Immediate Release Contact: Warren Bernard Email: warren@spxpo.com Bethesda, Maryland; September 8, 2014 Media Release ­— In this our 20th year, the Small Press Expo (SPX) is proud to announce it is bigger and better than ever.  The Expo, running on Saturday and Sunday, September 13-14, will have over 650 creators, 280 tables and 22 programming slots to entertain, enlighten and introduce attendees to the amazing world of independent and small press comics. For our 20th birthday, we are pleased to announce the first time appearances of Brandon Graham, Emily Carroll, Jules Feiffer and Lynda Barry as guests at the Small Press Expo. From his beginnings as a graffiti artist in his hometown of Seattle to his recent run as writer on the Image comics series Prophet as well as creator of his own comic Multiple Warheads, King City, Elevator and Universe So Big, Brandon Graham has been a vocal and passionate proponent of independent comics. SPX is honored to host Mr. Graham in this rare East Coast appearance. Emily Carroll was the recipient of this year's Pigskin Peter Award, which is given to the best Canadian experimental or avant-garde artist. Her magical web-comic Out of Skin was awarded the 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize given by The Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies. Her first book, Through the Woods, is being released next month by Margaret K. McElderry Books. Both Mr. Graham and Ms. Carroll will be signing their latest works at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund tables at SPX 2014. In a career that has spanned nearly seventy years, Jules Feiffer has won acclaim as a cartoonist, playwright, novelist, children's book author, screenwriter and professor. His works have garnered him an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters & the Comic Book Hall of Fame, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the National Cartoonists Society. Mr. Feiffer and his ground-breaking comic strip Feiffer, which ran weekly in the Village Voice for over forty years, are considered the godfather of the alt-weekly newspaper comic. He will be at SPX 2014 to sign his latest graphic novel, Kill My Mother, from the Liveright Division of W.W. Norton. In 1979, Lynda Barry's seminal Ernie Pook's Comeek began appearing in the alt-weekly The Chicago Reader. For nearly two decades, her comics, which appeared in over seventy newspapers nationwide, inspired several generations of independent cartoonists who saw themselves in her characters and recognized their struggles in her stories. Since retiring the strip in 2008, Ms. Barry has been active as a teacher running workshops for hundreds of students a year and doing her best to show people that everybody can be creative. She is now an assistant professor at the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Advance copies of her book, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor about teaching art to all skill levels, due out in October of this year from Drawn & Quarterly, will be available at SPX 2014. Small Press Expo (SPX) is the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels, and alternative political cartoons. SPX is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings together more than 600 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, and distributors each year. Graphic novels, mini comics, and alternative comics will all be on display and for sale by their authors and illustrators. The expo includes a series of panel discussions and interviews with this year's guests. The Ignatz Award is a festival prize held every year at SPX recognizing outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning, with the winners chosen by attendees at the show. As in previous years, profits from the SPX will go to support the SPX Graphic Novel Gift Program, which funds graphic novel purchases for public and academic libraries, as well as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which protects the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals. For more information on the CBLDF, visit their website at http://www.cbldf.org. For more information on the Small Press Expo, please visit http://www.spxpo.com.