Small Press Expo has announced the first Special Guests for SPX 2024. The show takes place on Saturday September 14 and Sunday September 15 with programming and workshops about the amazing world of independent comics and an exhibitor floor with over 500 creators.

Additional Special Guests will be announced over the next few weeks.

Tillie Walden

Tillie Walden will be signing copies of Clementine Book 1 and Book 2, as well as Junior High, a graphic novel made in collaboration with Tegan and Sara Quin. Also at the show there will be copies of her sketchbook compilation and never-before-seen zines! Her other work will be available as well, including her earliest work with Avery Hill Publishing. She will be giving the SPX Lecture at the Library of Congress at Noon, September 13.

Carol Lay

We are so honored to have Carol Lay as a Special Guest at SPX! She’s been creating art for decades and has an incredible body of work. Her new book, My Time Machine from Fantagraphics, is serious and funny, a sly cautionary political satire, and a rollicking time travel story full of puzzling paradoxes, edge-of-your-seat suspense, breezy badinage, and a deeply felt wonder at the universe.

Peter Kuper

Peter Kuper is a multi-award-winning cartoonist and illustrator who is frequently featured in The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad. In 1979 he co-founded the political comix magazine World War 3 Illustrated, and has produced over two dozen books during his career. Peter has lectured and exhibited his work extensively throughout the world and teaches Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels. Among other awards, in 2016 his graphic novel Ruins won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. He is currently working on a graphic novel on the history of insects and the people who study them. He will be signing copies of the paperback edition of Ruins published by SelfMadeHero

Dash Shaw

In his latest offering, Dash Shaw wrestles with the murky indeterminacy of life. Blurry, from the New York Review of Books, asks that readers sit in—try to enjoy, even—that place of doubt and indecision, where the future is uncertain, identity is unsettled, and chance encounters intrude. Sometimes making a choice is so damn hard. And who knows what will be the consequences of one’s action? In Blurry, Shaw creates a cast of characters who tell their stories of those pivotal moments of decision and what came after.

Christi Furnas

Christi Furnas’ graphic novel Crazy Like a Fox from Street Noise Books tells an autobiographically-inspired story about leaving home, figuring out life, being diagnosed with schizophrenia, and navigating the mental health system. Publishers Weekly says, “Furnas skewers the mental healthcare system in her sharp-edged graphic novel debut. . . . This surreal work reflects the disorientation of mental breakdown.”

About the book, Christi says, “I want Crazy Like a Fox to lift some of the fear and stigma around talking about psychotic illness, and offer hope. I’m happy and thriving.”

Christi will be talking about her graphic novel and mental health, and signing books at the show.

George Wylesol

George Wylesol is the author of the graphic novels 2120 and Curses, debuting at SPX from Avery Hill. He will be at SPX to talk about horror and the internet age, as well as signing books. His brightly-colored, experimental work ranges from short stories to choose-your-own-adventure style narratives that emphasize the weirdness of the world around us all and the prevalence of computers in our society today.

“His cartooning is economical, effective in a lunging sort of way. . . . the sensory experience of looking overpowers most everything else. His cartooning is economical, effective in a lunging sort of way,” says The Comics Journal about Curses.