Small Press Expo 2022 reveals its Special Guests
Small Press Expo has announced the first Special Guests for SPX 2022. The first in-person show in three years takes place on Saturday September 17 and Sunday September 18 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.
Keith Knight is the inspiration and Executive Producer of the Hulu series Woke, as well as being a current nominee for the Cartoonist of the Year Reuben Award. Among Keith’s many other awards are the Glyph Award, the Harvey Kurtzman Award for Best Syndicated Comic Strip, the Inkpot Award from San Diego ComiCon along with receiving a NAACP History Maker Award. His latest cartoon collection, Good On Both Sides, the fifth collection of his socio-political single-panel cartoon, (th)ink.


“Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is a remarkable first-hand account of New Yorker cartoonist, Sofia Warren’s experience embedded with New York State Senator Julia Salazar and her staff during their first year in office. “So much of this experience was a surprise to me,” says Warren: “that for their entire first legislative session, Julia and her staff let me be in the room.” Sofia will be making her first appearance at SPX.
Ruben Bolling is the author of the weekly satirical comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” which has appeared in hundreds of publications, including The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and The New York Times and currently appears on the online publications BoingBoing.net, DailyKos.com, and GoComics.com. Ruben has won the Herblock Prize, an RFK Journalism Award, a National Cartoonists Society Award, a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, and a Berryman Award from the National Press Foundation and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist (2019 and 2021).


Lonnie Millsap has been twice nominated for the prestigious Rueben Award and has won the Los Angeles National Cartoonists Society Dingy Award along with the Comic Art Professional Society’s Don Rico award. In 2018, his first cartoon was accepted by The New Yorker, which used his cartoons for their renowned Caption Contest. Millsap was also the character designer for Donny Hathaway’s Official animated ‘This Christmas’ music video released by Warner Records that has well over two million views. His work has also appeared in season one and two of Keith Knight’s television show, ‘Woke.’ Millsap’s latest cartoon book release is titled ‘Hit It To The Mermaid!’ (2022).
Megan Kelso has been drawing comics for over 30 years. In 2007, she was invited by The New York Times to serialize her “Watergate Sue” comic as part of the weekly “Funny Pages” feature. In 2019, she was selected for a public art commission for Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Her books include The Squirrel Mother (2006), Artichoke Tales (2010), and Queen of the Black Black (2011).


Tommi Parrish is a cartoonist and painter based in Montreal, QC. Their debut work, The Lie and How We Told It, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for the best LGBTQ graphic novel, was nominated for the Ignatz award, and was featured in several best of 2018 lists and translated into several languages.








GENE LUEN YANG is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He has written and drawn many graphic novels, including American Born Chinese, which was a National Book Award finalist, as well as the winner of the Printz Award and an Eisner Award. His graphic novel set Boxers and Saints won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has also written for the hit comics Avatar: The Last Airbender and Superman. His latest project is the comics and coding series with Mike Holmes, Secret Coders. geneyang.com. Sunday only
JIM RUGG is an Eisner and Ignatz Award winning cartoonist based in Pittsburgh. His books include Street Angel, the PLAIN Janes, the Guild, Afrodisiac, and Notebook Drawings.
GABRIELLE BELL’s work has been selected for Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney’s, the Believer, Bookforum, and Vice among numerous other publications. Her story, “Cecil and Jordan In New York,” was turned into a film by Michel Gondry. Bell’s previous graphic novel, The Voyeurs, was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and the Atlantic. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Find her online at gabriellebell.com. Saturday only
KICKLIY is the creator of the critically acclaimed Musnet series of books. The Musnet books follow the all-ages adventures of a certain poor Mus Musculous (a common field mouse, for those of you that don’t speak Latin) on his quest to become the greatest mouse painter that ever was.
SLOANE LEONG is a cartoonist currently living in Portland, Oregon who has worked for Image Comics, Dark Horse, Cartoon Network and more. Her Ignatz-nominated short comic, A Map to the Sun, will be expanded into a graphic novel and will be published by First Second in 2019. Sloane Leong’s newest comic, A Hollowing, is a lean grim story about a young girl and her horse, the breaking down of performed domesticity and the realization of the horrors of the body.
GILBERT HERNANDEZ is co-creator of the long-running, award-winning, and critically acclaimed series Love and Rockets, which in 2017 celebrates its 35th Anniversary. His books include Marbles, Bumperhead, Luba, Palomar, Speak of the Devil,Love from the Shadows and Girl Crazy. This year, Hernandez designed clothing based on his Love and Rockets characters for men and women available at Pinup Girl.
KEITH KNIGHT, winner of the Glyph, Harvey, and Inkpot Awards, is a spectacular cartoonist whose Knight Life comic strip is read nationwide in such newspapers as the Washington Post. Keef’s funny yet hard-hitting cartoons in his series (T)hink and The K Chronicles led him to be named one of the 2015 NAACP History Makers. Knight is the illustrator of the critically acclaimed tween book, Jake the Fake Keeps It Real. He also has a new collection of Knight Life strips called the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Behind.
Born in Palo Alto and raised in Nashville, award-winning, New-York-Times-bestselling illustrator JANET LEE is best known for her decoupage art technique. Self-taught, Lee has been drawing comics since she was old enough to hold a pencil. After working for more than a decade at the business end of publishing, Lee received her big break with the publication of Return of the Dapper Men. Since then, she has illustrated close to a dozen different books and anthologies. This year, Return of the Dapper Men returns in a new deluxe edition from Top Shelf Productions. Lee still lives and works in Nashville, in a house filled with one husband, one son, two dogs, and four very bad cats.
JIM MCCANN is an award-winning writer of comic books, television, and theatre. He wrote several critically acclaimed Marvel Hawkeye series before branching out into creating his own comics and graphic novels, as well as other projects. His first graphic novel, Return of the Dapper Men, won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Album. He has since gone on to create hit series such as the space-heist Lost Vegas and the ongoing top-rated series Mind the Gap, both published through Image Comics. This year, Return of the Dapper Men returns in a new deluxe edition from Top Shelf Productions.











Small Press Expo (SPX) is proud to announce it is again a sponsor of the
The National Book Festival is a fantastic convention in Washington, DC that began in 2001. Over the 15 years, it has welcomed numerous guests including some of the top comic/graphic novel creators.