Small Press Expo 2019 Announces Keith Knight, Craig Thompson, Ebony Flowers, Hannah Templer, Ben Passmore, and Lucy Knisley as Special Guests for 2019
Small Press Expo has announced another group of guests of Special Guests for SPX 2019. The festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, September 14-15, at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center and will have over 650 creators, 280 exhibitor tables, over 20 programming slots and additional hands-on workshops to introduce attendees to the amazing world of independent and small press comics. Additional Special Guests will be announced soon.
Keith Knight, winner of the Glyph, Harvey, and Inkpot Awards, is a spectacular and amazing cartoonist whose Knight Life comic strip is read nationwide in such newspapers as the Washington Post. Knight Life was optioned for a television series and is currently under development by Hulu with the title Woke. Keef’s funny yet hard-hitting cartoons in his webcomic series, (th)ink and The K Chronicles, led him to be named one of the 2015NAACP History Makers. Knight is the illustrator of the critically acclaimed tween book, Jake the Fake Keeps It Real. Keef has a new collection coming out this Fall called (th)ink: It’s the Racism, Stupid!
Craig Thompson is a cartoonist and the author of the award-winning books Blankets; Good-bye, Chunky Rice; and Habibi. He was born in Michigan in 1975, and grew up in a rural farming community in central Wisconsin. His graphic novel Blankets won numerous industry awards and has been published in nearly twenty languages. Thompson lives in Portland, Oregon.
Now, for the first time in his career, Thompson is working in serial form, in a bimonthly comic book series. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay—all comic book—Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300 year long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers.
Ebony Flowers was born and raised in Maryland. She holds a BA in Biological Anthropology from the University of Maryland College Park and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she wrote her dissertation as a comic (mostly). Ebony is a 2017 Rona Jaffe Award recipient. She lives in Denver, CO.Hot Comb is her first collection of short stories published by Drawn & Quarterly.
Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women’s lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn.
Hannah Templer is a queer cartoonist and graphic designer. In addition to writing and drawing Cosmoknights (Top Shelf Productions), they are the artist for GLOW (IDW Publishing, Netflix), and have also worked as a colorist, cover artist and interior artist on well-known titles such as Samurai Jack, Tomb Raider, and Jem and the Holograms. They enjoy life with their trusty dog Thistle and grumpy cat Noodle, and play tabletop roleplaying games as often as they can.
Ben Passmore lives in Philly. His comics are about crime, monsters, anarchism, sexual dysfunction, police brutality, art theory, and his feels. Creator ofDAYGLOAYHOLE and Goodbye, his comicYour Black Friend won the 2017 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic, as well as being nominated for an Eisner Award. His illustrations have appeared in publications such as including the New York Times, Irene, Now: The New Comics Anthology, and Believer Magazine. Ben contributes political/social editorial comics to The Nib, and his latest book is Bttm Fdrs with Ezra Claytan Daniels.
Lucy Knisley is a critically acclaimed and award-winning comic creator. She lives in Chicago.
She specializes in personal, confessional graphic novels and travelogues.
Her last name is confusing and has a silent K. It’s pronounced kind-of like “nigh-slee.”
It’s new comic book day tomorrow! We’ve got some early reviews today and while you wait for that, here’s some comic news and other reviews from around the web!
With most of the world powers at odds today with their citizens, the ugly head of “nationalism”, has creeped its way into most of the world’s conscience. As it has become increasingly more difficult, to tell whether a person’s good intentions can be separated from their political ideology, the world now mostly has ignored those less fortunate. Where once the world’s most powerful countries, were asked more often, whether they should intervene, most earliest in anyone’s mind who is living now, is America was going to intervene in World War II, it was never a question, “if”, but a question “when”. The harsh truth is that world lacks the most basic of human characteristics, empathy.
