For Immediate Release
Contact: Eden Miller
Small Press Expo Announces Special Guests Roz Chast, Derf, Ellen Forney, Ron Wimberly, Anders Nilsen, Rina Ayuyang and Lawrence Lindell for SPX 2018 Bethesda, Maryland - June 21, 2018 Media Release - Small Press Expo is proud to announce the first group of Special Guests for SPX 2018. The festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, September 15-16, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center and will have over 650 creators, 280 exhibitor tables and 22 programming slots to introduce attendees to the amazing world of independent and small press comics. Additional Special Guests will be announced shortly. SPX 2018 is honored to have the following creators as Special Guests to this year's show: | | Roz Chast is a long time cartoonist for The New Yorker who wrote and illustrated the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? from Bloomsbury. It won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Kirkus Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent book is GOING INTO TOWN: A Love Letter to New York. She has published eight collections of her cartoons, illustrated several children's books and received honorary doctorates from the Pratt Institute and Dartmouth College. Photo courtesy of Bill Hayes. | | | | | Derf is the author of My Friend Dahmer (Abrams Comicarts, 2012), the haunting account of his teenage friendship at Revere High School with the future serial killer. It has been hailed as one of the finest graphic novels in recent memory by Slate, The Plain Dealer, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Kirkus Reviews, Le Monde, El Mundo, The Guardian and many more. The film adaptation of My Friend Dahmer premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and played in cinemas in the US and abroad throughout 2017 and 2018.
SPX is honored to show a screening of My Friend Dahmer, after which Derf will talk about the book and movie. | | Ellen Forney authored her 2012 graphic memoir, Marbles for which she was the 2012 recipient of The Stranger Genius Award for Literature as well as the winner of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis 2013 Gradiva Award.
| | | | | Ronald Wimberly is a cartoonist/designer. He's worked with The New Yorker, Dargaud, DC, Marvel, Image, Darkhorse and many others. He's exhibited his comics in New York, Tokyo, and Paris. Ronald was the 2016 Columbus Comics resident and two time resident cartoonist at Angoulême Maison des Auteurs.
| | Anders Nilsen is the author of nine books including Big Questions, Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, Poetry is Useless and the forthcoming Tongues. His work has appeared in Kramer's Ergot, Mome, the New York Times and elsewhere and been translated widely overseas. Nilsen has garnered three Ignatz Awards and the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize.
Anders will be debuting the latest volume of his acclaimed series Tongues at SPX 2018. | | | | | Rina Ayuyang (Saturday Only) | Rina Ayuyang has been nominated for the Ignatz and Eisner Awards, and she was honored with a MoCCA Arts Festival Awards of Excellencez 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.
Rina Ayuyang's latest from Drawn & Quarterly, Blame This on the Boogie, is the true story of how Hollywood musicals got one person through school, depression, and the challenges of parenthood. | | Joshua W. Cotter is the author of Skyscrapers of the Midwest, Driven by Lemons and the Nod Away series. He lives in rural northwest Missouri with his wife, children, cats and an acute sense of impending mortality. They keep him making comics.
| | | | | Lawrence Lindell is a cartoonist, author and teacher from California. He created From Black Boy With Love, Hey, People of Color, Couldn't Afford Therapy, So I Made This and the webcomic The Section. When he's not drawing/writing comics, he is usually buying/reading them.
| | 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 650 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.smallpressexpo.com. | | Small Press Expo P.O. Box 5704 Bethesda, Maryland 20824 | | | | | | |
Lucy Bellwood is a professional Adventure Cartoonist based in Portland, OR. As an outspoken advocate for transparency in creative careers, Lucy has presented on subjects like following an independent path, the finances of freelancing, and working with imposter syndrome at events and institutions around the globe. Her latest collection takes a hilarious, humanizing look at what it's really like to persevere when our Inner Critics are trying to take the wheel. She is a member of Helioscope, the largest collective of freelance comics professionals in North America, where she spearheads the studio's Mentorship Program.
