Small Press Expo 2024 Announces More Special Guests
Small Press Expo has announced more 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.
SPX 2024 is honored to have the following creators as Special Guests to this year’s show:
Ngozi Ukazu
Ngozi Ukazu is a DC Comics artist, New York Times-bestselling graphic novelist, and the creator of comics like Check, Please!, BUNT!, DC Comics’ Barda (which will debut at SPX), and the forthcoming graphic novel FLIP.
She graduated from Yale University with a degree in Computing in the Arts, and since 2020 her cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker. Her comic Check, Please! won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic at Small Press Expo 2019.
Glynnis Fawkes
Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C. from Princeton University Press, illustrated by Glynnis Fawkes, tells the story of one of history’s greatest mysteries: what caused the ancient civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean to collapse more than three thousand years ago, bringing the Late Bronze Age to an abrupt end?
In this vivid and captivating full-color graphic adaptation of the landmark book, author-illustrator Glynnis invites us to follow two young friends living in the aftermath of the cataclysm as they unravel why it happened—and reveal important lessons for today’s interconnected and vulnerable world.
Tara Booth
Known for her buzzing colors, delightful patterns, sharp humor, and unflinching vulnerability, Tara Booth does not miss any mark in this exquisitely woven collection of pure and nasty magic. Part advice column and exhibit, exploration of psychic pollution and tranquility, Processing is—quite simply—intrepid: in its honesty; its unapologetic grossness; its unrivaled and frank portrayal of life with a body that bleeds. With color that vibrates and fluids that impose, Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It from Drawn and Quarterly, lays Booth bare—literally and figuratively.
Yasmeen Abedifard
Yasmeen Abedifard, last year’s Ignatz Award winner for Outstanding Minicomic, debuts her first graphic novel from Silver Sprocket, When to Pick a Pomegranate, at SPX 2024. It is a strikingly lyrical and heart-wrenching collection from a lauded young talent. In this collection of contemplative and cathartic short comics, the pomegranate Anar and the woman Guli exist as reflections of each other — repellent to one another and yet inexorably drawn together once more. As they evolve through each story, proceeding through the stages of the plant life cycle, they take on new roles: muse and artist, gardener and seed, lover and fruit.
Abedifard’s comic form evokes Persianate storytelling and draws on stylistic elements found in illuminated manuscripts, building an experience as rich and complex as the taste of pomegranate on one’s tongue. A poetic and evocative exploration of destiny and survival.
https://www.yasmeenabedifard.net
Emma Hunsinger
Emma Hunsinger, the creator of the popular “How to Draw a Horse” published in The New Yorker, will be debuting her funny, vulnerable, and disarming graphic novel How It All Ends at SPX 2024. It is a book about being overwhelmed by who you are and who you might be—and all the possibilities in between
Beth Hetland
We are thrilled to have Beth Hetland as a guest at SPX! She’ll be presenting and signing her graphic novel debut Tender, from Fantagraphics. It is a psychological thriller about a woman obsessed with her vision for a picture-perfect, curated life. Katie Skelly deemed it “a Jeanne Dielman for the Instagram generation” and Publishers Weekly called it “nimble and unsettling”.
Sara Lautman
Sara Lautman’s cartoon art has been published in The New York Times, Playboy, Mad, The Paris Review and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, where her cartoons have appeared since 2016. Support Craft (Parsifal Press), a new collection of three stories about work, aging, and the supernatural lesbian rumor mill, will debut at SPX 2024.
