 Hi, everyone. How you all doing? Okay, we are at the first ever SF queer comics fest pride and panels. How are you all doing? Thank you, welcome welcome everyone My name is Christina Mitra Pronoun she her idea and I am the program manager here at the Hormel LGBTQIA Center of San Francisco Public Library I am so thrilled that you're here that everyone out there is enjoying themselves and that we're doing this this is Honestly one huge experiment and so far. I think it's working. So thank you for being part of this experiment Thank you for being part of the community here the Hormel LGBTQIA Center was the very first Center of its kind in a municipal public building so for a government building to have a place for our community in 1996 was groundbreaking and at this point right now as far as I can tell You're welcome to correct me. We're the only urban public library anywhere in the United States I have venture to say even the world that has a center like ours. So I'm very very proud of the work we do. I Don't want us to be the first and I don't well. I don't want us to be the only I want there to be centers like this in every part of the country in the world in small towns and Suburbans towns and so I hope that that won't be the case for forever But for now we are and we're unique in that way and I welcome you to learn more about us and explore what we have for you Which is an array of queer and trans books We've got incredible archives documenting the queer history of San Francisco If you have any questions about any of that our tables out there We've got the purple tablecloth number 24 and we'd love to answer your questions So if you're I continue on I do want to go ahead and Make sure that we acknowledge the land that we are on Let's see trying to get a slide here There we go So the San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula We recognize that the Ramatush Ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia We honor the Ramatush Ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to Mother Earth as Indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions the Ramatush Ohlone have never ceded Lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereignty as First peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the Ramatush Ohlone people We recognize and respectfully honor that in order to respectfully honor and embrace the Ramatush people We must collaborate meaningfully with them to record indigenous knowledge and how we care for San Francisco and all its people So let that be both an acknowledgement and also a call to action for all of us to build Relationships with our local indigenous communities. Thank you Without further ado, I want to welcome up our amazing all ages panel coming up Right here. Oh Our clicker is having some fun times with us today Media services team if there's any support you can offer me that would be awesome. Thank you While they're doing that I do want to give a shout out to our incredible media services team They're making sure that we have sound and audio and the recording this so that people can see it in the future So I want to give it a big shout out to them And also to our custodial team who set up all the tables and chairs outside and are going to do the cleanup Afterwards we thank them and also the friends of the San Francisco Public Library without whom none of this could have been possible Thank you. All right, let's bring it up. Let's give it up for our panel here. Think of the children queer all ages comics I want to welcome our moderator Laura gow. Can we give Laura some love? And we've got our incredible panel here today I'm gonna go ahead and say their names. I want man's please come on up Woo Kyla Aiko Smith Samadrita Sam gosh And Amanda Castillo, please welcome them all warmly Thank y'all Hello Okay, thank y'all so much for coming out. I'm so so stoked to have this wonderful group of panelists My name is Laura gal pronouns are she and they I'm a local the area based comic artist and writer Who writes primarily for young adults and children's so it is in my passion to be able to connect with all of y'all? Amazing artists and writers who also write for all ages So I'm going to do a very quick intro of each of y'all and then they will have a couple of slides about their wonderful work to share with y'all will have a short Q&A about Everything your work writing for kids drawing for kids and then lastly in the five minutes Y'all will get an opportunity to ask them any question you want So keep that in mind, you know write all your questions down get ready for that But make sure to just leave your questions until the very end. All right, so let's go ahead and get started so First here on my left is a one man's a one is a professor of African American literature at Mills College in Oakland, California a Life-long artist and writer a one has participated in solo and group exhibitions as well as comic and zine fest From the Bay Area all the way to Brooklyn and our illustration in comics a one uses humor and bright colors to explore race gender power and The people and places in which they intersect. Thank you so much for being here Thank you. Awesome. Next we have Kyla Ico Kyla Ico is a cartoonist and editor who's always looking for good soup noodle recommendation You'll have to give us them later on and the spicier the better She's currently working on Fox light her debut middle grade graphic novel about a lost fox spirit and the non-binary noodle maker who helps him find his way home Yeah, cute. Yes. Please. Please ask Kyla about it after All right. Next we have Sam also known as tickle Tickle is an illustrator from India learning about comics at CCA in San Francisco Her favorite thing to draw is casual intimacy between characters She likes to capture a comfy loving vibe with her illustrations and when not drawing She's usually having an existential revelation same and Or petting her dog. Very cute. What kind of dog? She's a mixed breed mixed breed. Okay favor and German Spitz. Oh Adorable. Okay. I hope you put pictures in your slides. All right last and at least Amanda Castillo Amanda is a cartoonist and illustrator who loves to share memorable and heartfelt stories through drawings words or both They are the illustrator and co-author of the middle grade graphic novel trilogy map makers that you've brought here And are cooking up their next comics to one day share with y'all. So one round of applause for all of our panelists All right. So first we have a wand sharing about her work And can you hear me? Great my comics and I should also mention that I am a visiting professor of illustration at CCA and Sam is my amazing TA in our queer illustration course I am my comics. I wanted to show a few images. I Started doing comics in 2014 mostly autobiographical with a twist. I can't time travel, but I can in my comics And gender studies is the collection that my is officially out on March 4th But I that I have with me today and it looks back on Some funny and interesting moments from my life college and backwards those moments in which being a genderqueer black nerd makes things extra funny or awkward or interesting and Drawings of you know, I'm kids and childhood plays an important role in me telling these stories For example, this these are some images from a story in which I look back on probably the first genderqueer person I ever met when I was in second grade a student I will refer to as Tiffany Banks the notion of Black women's hair and how my own hair journey played an interesting and important role in my evolution as a genderqueer person and also the journey of my niece as You know Dealing with three and four year olds as they're trying to figure out questions of gender. I love comic strips I think it's a beautiful wonderful form And so I've also explored the three and four panel comic strip in comics called check all that apply black nerd stories And yeah, that's me Hi, I'm Kyla Aiko. I use she and they pronouns. This is just my icon So what I'm here to talk about mostly is I'm the author and Artist of a series or a book called Fox site coming out from fee one friends Macmillan I'm in 2027 and so these are some earlier Illustrations from my pitch and from the announcement a lot of stuff I'm working on a secret, but hopefully I can share more in the near future I'm also one of five artists on the Freddie Mercury shadows illuminated Comic from Z2 comics We had some amazing artists I'm in the company of and two writers and it was just a really cool project to be a part of especially Just being able to work on our Freddie Mercury comic I'm also one of 29 on trans and non-binary creators in the outside Which is a collection of short comics about autobiographical comics about being trans and non-binary I also letter manga monho and Western comics like jungle juice Dandan and everything is fine So these are some comics I've worked on and it's also really fun and fulfilling in different ways to connect In like children's media in different ways Finally, I'm also one of the members of uttot comics uttot means fart into Golug and it's a group of comic creators who realized we weren't spending enough time making short comics just for our own enjoyment Whether it be day jobs or just other work that was kind of not letting us be as creative as we wanted to So we work on comic sprints and just encourage each other to just make comics. Oh My name is Sam and if you're aware of me on the internet, you probably know me as ticklil I am illustrator wrist pain haver former insomniac and all these things that I'm mentioning here Usually I started so I started my art journey with in the world of illustration and This is some of the examples like I have a series of illustrations that I have here with me today And as you can see I like working with lights and creating a mood using like environment surroundings and just Stuff like that sometimes I also do fan art This is some of my recent fan art where as I said in my intro, I like to explore casual intimacy between characters that is usually because I am an asexual person and Right now in my comics journey. I'm trying to like explore some more of that So casual intimacy really plays a huge role in that so I'm trying to Have more of my work echo that sentiment So if you're interested in any of that, you should totally come by my table and check out some of my stuff Today mostly I'll be talking about my work on night owls and summer skies Which was a webtoon original series that aired in? 2022 It is about let's be an icon Emma Emma Lynn Who gets unceremoniously dumped into a summer camp against her wishes, but wait a second the counselor is kind of hot We are gonna probably hopefully talk about that a little bit more in the panel, so I hope you're looking forward to that This is them This this should give you an idea of what what the whole five was like and With that here is everywhere you can find me and those me Sam. Thank you for visiting Hello, everyone. My name is Amanda Castillo. I am a cartoonist and illustrator born and raised here in the Bay Area I am the artist and co-author on the children's book series Mapmakers from Random House Graphic, which is what I've been working on for like the past four or five years or so And previously I had work published with boom studios lined forage and college humor So mapmakers is a series about a young girl who finds a lost map in her hometown and She finds out that her land was once glorious and beautiful and is now desolate And so she sets out on the journey while meeting other kids just like her To restore their land to what it once was after or before it was taken over by a group called the night coats And so the first two books are out and the last book is set to release in April this year And I always like to show. Oh wait Hold on. I was just I'm just the Illustrator on that one and so Now that I'm done with that project I'm sort of barreling into working on my own stuff and so this is just a little bit of an excerpt from a pitch that I'm working on for a graphic novel aimed at teens and I can't say too too much yet since it's still in the works but it will be one that explores how discovering identity as like cultural identity kind of intersects with Queer identity and how they kind of interplay with each other and Inform each other and one's existence. But yeah, thank you. Thank you so much So I think one thing that's very clear from hearing about all y'all introduce your works is that y'all have all come from such diverse backgrounds of how you got into comics and how you started making all-ages comics too like we have folks like tickle who Mainly did like web comics and web tunes all the way to a one who's probably our most seasoned like veteran in the comics industry Here with so many books, right? So I'd love to just go down the road Maybe just start from Amanda first and then come down since you're fresh off the mic Why don't you just quickly introduce sort of your comics journey? We have a lot of young faces here who you know are looking up to y'all and want to be all soon So what was your comics journey like to get to here today, and then why did you decide to create for all ages? So I went to school out on the East Coast I went to the Maryland Institute College of Art and I Didn't really know that I wanted to do comics until I got there and the reason why I kind of got into comics is because there's like a lot of like small press shows out on the East Coast and that's sort of how I got like Like the our department was generous enough to fund a table for students, which I'm extremely thankful for So then I kind of just use that opportunity to start making I've always had characters in my head And so I started putting them into comics And so a lot of those kind of because I was young at the time. Well, I mean I still am young But a lot of them kind of coincided with like my own experiences so that fell more in line with like teenagers younger kids just what I knew and so then that's sort of where like the The kind of comics that I was making so about like friendship about like growing up And I've always kind of been a sucker for coming of age So I kind of feel like it kind of just natural. I like naturally fell into that spot But then the more when I started getting smaller jobs I Realized that I enjoyed Seeing how kids would react to these comics and it kind of mirrored the same way that I would feel as a kid Reading a lot of comics. I read a lot of manga and like the Sunday like sillies and stuff and I just like there was just something so Like enticing and magical about that Because it was just there the joy that kids have for comics is like so like pure and like passion-filled And I just I wanted to be able to be someone who can make something for Because as like a queer kid, I didn't know like there wasn't as much stuff or it was harder to find stuff that like I could relate to so I wanted to be Someone who like helped like create stuff like that. Um, so that's kind of just like how I fell into it Thank you. No, I totally agree. Like, yeah, thank you so much Feel like a lot of folks no matter what generation you are right like growing up You probably didn't have as much and now we have so many amazing creators. So yeah All right, Sam, right. So I'm pretty new to the world of comics like all my life I have mostly been Like an artist and an illustrator animator for a short period of time But growing up. I definitely remember being like very distinctly Inspired by the Tintin comics, especially like the clean line style and As a kid who relied a lot on line art. I really sort of fell into that I was like, what if I try to you know make comics that uses lines like that and that went on to Like inform my art style later in life like even even now I rely like on my line art and I'm like really proud of my line art So that I would say it was my biggest inspiration The other one would be being an Indian and Bengali kid I don't know how many of you know Satyajit Ray The famous Indian film director and he's like my biggest inspiration because he he made films He illustrated his own stories. He wrote he did graphic design. He was he did it all So I was like very very inspired by comic adaptations of his his detective short story series Feluda and As a kid, I remember I'd like make Fan art comics of my favorite anime Where I was acutely aware of the Begdal test as a kid where I was like, hey the girls never talked to each other What's going on? So I would make like fan art comics and put all the girls together and you know send them on a beach holiday or something So I would be like, yeah, I'm living my dreams Like I'll make all the Disney princesses interact and all the female ninja from Naruto They would all have a fun time like no men in sight. I would do that so yeah, that's kind of how I grew up with comics and Yeah, right now it's mostly webtoons And I'm learning more about the world of comics at CCA because my way of getting into things for the first time is doing a Master's degree in it. So here I am learning every day. Thank you Yeah, I can also relate for I feel like a lot of us the first queer content were just like fan art or fan fiction Written by other queer folks, right of like, oh like they have chemistry Like let's just make them be friends and more than friends and like have a good time, right? So I can totally relate how many of y'all like read queer fan art fan fiction Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of y'all know right that's that's where our people are at Kyla, so I got started with art and comics. Um, I guess I grew up reading the Sunday funnies in the paper I really like pickles. I'd call it the grandma grandpa comic Like that's that's not queer. It's just something I enjoyed And then I didn't really like have a concept of oh people like are actually cartoonist people do this for their job Until like kind of recently, but I also grew up reading like a lot of manga. I was really into bleach I have a lot of notebooks of pages of like Panels from bleach that I copied just like the pages and I was like that kid during read I just like trace over it I was like, I love this comic so much and I think that Influenced me to be like I know people enjoy comics like what it's like. It would be really cool to Writing and drawing into something like that like what a far-off dream But like I think a lot of my comic work kind of started during the pandemic I had a friend named Sam Nakahiro who reached out on Instagram and she was going to The Center for Cartoon Studies and they do a project where they make an anthology and she said would you like to contribute a comic? And I said oh sure, but in my head. I was like I haven't really made comics like ever so like oh Okay But I did then I really enjoyed it and being in the company of other cartoonists in that anthology Kind of encourage me to look more into like what does it take to make comics? What does it take to get published or even just do things more consistently? And I think that's kind of how I've gotten to this point. Yeah, just the support of friends and like encouragement Thank you so much And I think for me it's the encouragement of the comics and zine community That have really open comics the door for comics. I've been doing art with intention Since about 1996 I started out as a painter doing a lot of acrylic on canvas and paper and then Took a turn towards illustration in 2010 when I started doing a series of a thousand and one portraits of black men and Bundling certain, you know, I take 30 here 10 there and bundle them and sell them as zines and it's really Through zine making that I encountered some of the people who are here today Like at loose and John Macy is going to be speaking a V Jeter I don't think is here, but does an amazing comic about zombies in downtown Oakland and our organizer Justin Hall and and I always I loved comics love and rockets was probably the The gateway drug for me in terms of comics that really got me into just Obsessing and walking 45 minutes each way to buy a love and rockets every six weeks when I was in college But it looked like too much work to me And you know, but meeting people who made comics gave me a sense Really made me want to try to make my own and so now I do I have My feet firmly planted in illustration and writing I have a couple of illustrated books and but I also have my first collection of comics gender studies autobiographical comics and And you know, I don't think of an age when I create them, but the audience has found me Awesome. Thank you so much. One thing I really want to dive into is speaking of Queer comics and queer content, but another subsect that Amanda you kind of called to is the intersection of how cultural identity and different types of our own backgrounds intersect with Queerness and I think one thing I'm also very proud of is that we're a panel of all like folks of color too Which is great and I want to be able to highlight those experiences. So for each of y'all While there's for your own work or like Sam you had mentioned some changes you made in adapted works How do you try to bring? Unique experiences of your life into your works so we can start off with a while now and go down the overwhelming majority of my work is about Black people black experiences black community African-American, but also Afro diasporic two out of every ten black people in America are Afro-Caribbean Afro-European African or the children of African immigrants and so you know that really becomes my lens and my goal is to And I think part of it is you know, maybe because I have the privilege of doing so But I'm not really interested in creating the ideal role model of black experience black life I'm just interested in showing how it looks to me how I experience it More voices more representation more images of You know, I don't want us to be my my job as an artist and comic creator is to make sure that I don't leave people out simply because They are living more complicated lives than role modeling would suggest matter So that has always been my challenge And my work is very much informed by that I love doing comics about those moments when I am incredibly awkward or ridiculous And you know just want to show you know, it's it's a privilege to be human And I feel like that's my work is to humanize on our good days and our bad days and everything in between Thank you so much I think I I'm inspired a lot by my friends and like relationships, and I think I just wanted to bring some of that to the page I think it's just um, I feel like a lot of advice given for people who want to write is like Well, sometimes I hear oh right what you know or sometimes that I've also heard that a lot of work that you do will turn out to be autobiographical even if you don't necessarily mean it to be that way and Not necessarily in the sense that that's bad or good Just that a lot of people write from their experiences and that finds its way into their work whether on purpose or not so I think that I think that's true for me especially and for my middle grade comic I just really wanted to write for I don't know like the Asian kids who like didn't see a lot of themselves in books growing up Yeah, thank you So for me It's a little bit different because I did grow up in India as an Indian so So for me it was very much like I was part of the mainstream culture So I would say I had the privilege to look sort of outside of myself and my culture when I wanted to think of my art Right now The the most important part of my culture that I'm thinking of bringing into my work especially my comics work is my experiences with traveling with family because as a Bengali kid an Indian and Bengali kid Travel forms like a really really integral part of our childhood and family dynamics because like every holidays You'll have like families from all over the city packing up going to the mountains or to the to the ocean or to the forest somewhere and They're they're gonna be in in one space for like a week and seeing only each other's faces quarantine anyone and it Brings up a lot of these interesting family dynamics and Also, I feel like as a child going on these family trips looking at nature being encouraged to Appreciate a place and culture for what it is forms a really core part of my identity So I think that's something I really am trying to bring into my work like How do we as tourists see Places that we visit For what they are like be it the nature be it the people the food just like a holistic experience of space and and I feel like In a weird way that is tied to my cultural identity as a Bengali person so right now I'm working on my thesis for my masters and it's about a family trip and I'm trying to really Include more like what those subtle experiences so that if a Bengali person were to pick up the book They would immediately see themselves in it. So that's me Thank you And I think for me like ideal my work deals a lot with identity like my own personal written work not just in the queer aspect, but I'm Filipino and Mexican and I feel like growing up there was sort of like a weird straddle thing Internally where I just didn't feel like I was completely one or the other like make mixed-kid things but in the sense that like because neither was Neither part of my ethnic identity wasn't white. It was much harder for me to find Like media to relate to in that sense. So a lot of what I write now deals with just the What's the word like the the internal conflict with oneself of trying to figure out how to Navigate like these different aspects of your identity when you don't fool like fully feel a part of it and Then how like I said before how that informs Like queerness so all pretty much all of my characters are queer and so I think for me my own personal journey of like Stepping into something that was a little bit more comfortable came along with starting to understand like the Filipino aspect of myself and so I think understanding like that portion of you like one portion of your identity it just serves to inform and Like other portions of your identity because it's just all intersected in you And so that's really something that I try to get across and pretty much like all the work that they do Thank you so much see so we Have about like seven minutes left for the rest of this before we open it up So just a quick reminder to keep the questions in your head. I know this is going by so quickly But I want to spend this time now to kind of dig a little deeper into each of y'all's books and works and careers I've read a lot of y'all stuff huge huge fan So I'll start off with Kyla I know you are working on Fox site and you said it's coming out in like a couple of years, right? Okay, but you while you're working on this you also as you've shown here have Collab on so many cool anthologies and like other types of books and Comics so I love to ask you for the audience How do you decide sort of which projects to take on and then how does one even get published? So first question, how do I decide what projects to take on? I think specifically for lettering work right now a lot of it is Really who you know, it's a lot of connections, but what I did was I Sometimes I get in a mood where I'm like, oh, what if I did this and I just go What if I think like What if I think like with the confidence of a white man Open up my email I go into a state and I just go okay. I'm gonna write a cold email So that's what happened for working with Viz Media on manga So you just called emailed I just emailed like one editor and he was checking his emails that day So he gave me a lettering test and I turned it back in and they said great We'll put you on your roster And then he for Viz Media, they do this thing called simo pubs where? On different days of the week, but let's take the Sunday weekly shown in Jump Magazine So there are a ton of series that come out in Japan and what Viz Media does in America is they Publish those Series at the same time as they do in Japan So you're on like a tight schedule and they said let's put you on this to like Test out if you're like good to work with and I was like sure and they said let's put you on this thing called super smartphone it has 300 lines of text per chapter and the turn around is 24 hours and you have to retouch screen tone and Cell phones and now I never want to work another cell phone manga, but yeah now. I'm like oh a technology my phone girl But yeah from manga it's a lot of you get assigned things and you do have some flexibility in turning things down or asking Oh, I've heard of this thing if you see it. I'd be interested in it and for other projects like The Freddie Mercury one and the outside I was reached out to and I was really grateful for those opportunities to just work with a Lot of cool artists and like creators And then all the small stuff like my mini comics most of them came out of Utaught comics where my friends are just like you should make comics I'm gonna text you until you make a comic So yeah, that's kind of that. Could you repeat your second question? Oh Just like how you get published for getting published. I think I was on Twitter a lot in 2020 and I thought oh like I Was just like really into like oh, how do you? Like publish a book like what goes into that and what kind of work do you need to do? I think I took like a couple classes in like high school that were kind of Creative writing classes and we talked a little bit about the publishing process So I just like thought back at that and I was like, what if I do that? Well, I'm in limbo with jobs and like internships because I had just graduated and was waiting to hear back on things that Never materialized so I was like, oh, I'll just put all my efforts into like book publishing Which is not a great gamble, but it worked out and I'm grateful for that Awesome. Thank you Next I want to jump over to Sam Also, we have like two minutes for the three of y'all Let's get like the TLDR answers But for Sam You also worked on webtoons. You worked on night owls and summer skies and I think one thing we've talked about between the two of us was like how you When it was at an adaptation, right of like a famous novel novel. Yeah a famous novel and you kind of put your own Culture into some of the characters and you like switch it up a little bit, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so in the novel all the characters are American But they were like since so the team at webtoon was like since food and family and culture is really important to the story and You're an Indian artist. So what do you think of making this one character Indian? So we can include more of the food and like the culture and stuff like that. So I was like, yeah, let's do it Which was really special because like I was reached out to by webtoon to do this project So in a sense it could have been anyone But it is kind of comforting for me to know that It is a specific thing and it's different because it was me like not like if it was another artist It would have been their culture So it's like there is this that this really like personal touch that I was able to give to the comic Which I'm like really happy about. Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like I am the artist I'm gonna take it all and make it my I love that Amanda so for map makers you said you were the main artist and then you also co-wrote. Is that correct? I didn't write anything, but I was listed as a co-author. Okay, cool. All right extra credit So you mainly did the so you did the art primarily and then you worked with another writer, right? Yeah I love for you to talk about How is it like Working as a writer I know some folks might really specialize in just one or the other And then now that you're kind of pitching something that you are also both writing and drawing Can you let us know sort of the differences and maybe even the challenges of both? Yeah, for sure I think with being just the artist it It's easier in terms of like for ideation Because when I'm I'm a writer now that I'm writing and like doing my own thing It is a lot of like sitting down hunkering down really getting those ideas out Um But as just an artist I also enjoy like I I enjoy telling my own stories But there's something really nice about being telling the story as the artist because with graphic novels It's just a lot of the storytelling is going to be in the images So it's really fun collaborating with the writer In building this world So he didn't really have like an idea of what he wanted these characters to look like so then he like is He's like an absolute sweetheart. And so he gave me so much room to kind of develop The characters how I want to see them how I would want to see these characters out in the book And like the world as well And so there's just a lot of going back and forth fun like fun and trust between us in kind of crafting this and What makes it really fun as well is that we come up with ideas that like we couldn't have thought of ourselves And so that yeah, it's very different from just working on stuff on your own But the positive to it as well working on stuff on my own is that I do I am allowed to be Much more like intimate with like the ideas and like the themes and all of that stuff Coming directly from me Which I really enjoy because that's something that I've always enjoyed as an artist. Um, but yeah Awesome. Thank you. Okay. And then last but not least for awan. Um, we did get the green lights for A few more minutes, but for you You've made so many books your professor Yeah, the list just goes on and on right, but I would love to ask If kid you was here right now like in the audience, you know, and it's like looking at this panel How would kid you react like what would you want to tell kid you and what would kid you say to you right now? It's an interesting question because um I my path has been circuitous into art I could tell kid you um, you can actually take art classes in college and you won't melt Go ahead and do that Because it was a huge missed opportunity to not um take To even pursue art studies in as an undergraduate But it would have changed my path and I'm really pleased with where I how I got there. Um, I think kid you would be really amused and really amazed and um And would say what are you waiting for do more do more? And um, you know, I did a children's book in november My first children's book came out and I think kid you would love that because I kind of fell in love with art and with writing through children's books Back in the 1970s when I was a kid So No, I love that. I think every time I need inspiration or anytime I'm like, oh man Like I don't know if I can keep drawing anymore. I just think about you know, five ten year old me who would have been like Yo, this is sick. Like what are you doing? Stop hesitating, right? Yeah. Yeah Awesome. Well, thank you all so much a quick round of applause for everyone Cool. So we have time for a few questions. Please raise your hand and we'll get the mic to you Please don't shout anything out Wait until you have the mic to ask the question. So raise your hand Hi, I'm proud Oh, you got one over here When you're uh, when you're making a story for kids or for middle schoolers or high schoolers Does that affect how you think about the way you approach the art? Like the way you might lay out a page or the way the way that you might want to Graphically represent a story idea that you have Versus the way you would do it if you were making for an adult audience Question is this for everyone or for a specific person? Yeah for anyone who finds that interesting enough to answer All right Fight fight fight Um, I think personally for me Not so much but maybe so in how like I choose to convey expressions And like highlight like what I choose to highlight I feel like when like now that I've So I did like middle grade For map makers and then now that I'm working on stuff for teens the teen stuff tends to like lean a little bit quieter A little bit more contemplative And I think that's just that comes with like the nature of a lot of the themes that are in like teenage books So Yeah, I would say yeah like I would say yeah like I think there is like an energy that I really enjoy like putting Into like kids books because a lot of them. Um, there's like a lot of adventure There's a lot of like friendship and I think that does kind of inform how the panels are laid out how the characters express But yeah Thank you Awesome. Any more questions? One over here Hello, can you guys hear me? Okay, so um, I guess I was wondering about I a lot of like queer comics and cartoons that I watched I noticed that Homophobia isn't like always written into the stories that much and I'm what I'm wondering Sorry is or isn't it isn't like there's a lot of times where the story it's it's like all Rainbows and smiles. There's not really like they're not really talking about like the struggles There's representation, but it's not necessarily speaking about What it's like, so I'm just wondering. Um, do you think it's important to put that into stories and why or like Do you notice that or Okay, so in night owls and summer skies specifically there is homophobia But there is also like sort of the flip side of everything sunshine and rainbows um, I feel like uh Especially for all ages and uh comics aimed at a younger audience We need a healthy mix of both because when kids are growing up and they see Uh Something that is normalized in in the media that they're consuming They're like they they will internalize the fact that oh, it's normal And uh in my opinion we can we can like maybe push the homophobia like to like later stages of age Then you can be like, okay. Now we're coming to reality a little bit But inside me my base has already formed that being queer is normal so like That is kind of where I committed at it from uh, like Queer media also deserves uh, representation where it is not uh, like Necessary for it to touch on um prejudice So that's me You know, I was thinking I think similarly, um, you know, um It's kind of like, uh, you know, if I you do a book about say a black Experience and it's not most of black life isn't defined by The experiences the way that people who are not black perceive black people, which is essentially what racism is And in some ways homophobia is the way that people who are not queer trans non-binary perceive that community But most of um, I feel like it becomes a really great way of centering Queer folks and trans and non-binary folks to not necessarily center homophobia Accept in those instances in which it's very salient and very relevant. Um, but um, you know, I it feels like in some ways it feels like a power move You know, so yeah Yeah, I'll quickly add my two cents that um, I'm not like I'm like 28 I feel like I'm kind of in between a lot of different generations here, but uh growing up I feel like a lot of the media I saw had a ton of homophobia Whereas it was almost as if every gay story was a sad sob story, you know And I remember talking to other creators and be like, oh man, where are our happy stories? You know, like why Always just be sad and mopey about like no one accepting us Um, so I think it's actually refreshing to hear that there's people out there who they've only consumed very happy Queer stories and I'm glad that there's now both sides of the spectrum You know, you can have whatever you want based on what mood you're feeling So yeah, thank you so much for asking that question Awesome. Um, we have two minutes left. Anyone have a quick question they want to ask All right. Oh, okay here very quick because we we do have to kick everyone out for the next panel soon Which unless y'all stay for it is queer horror. It will be a wonderful panel as well Hi, um real quick. Do you have any um messages or themes that you think um Queer and trans kids need to hear from uh, the media and are those things Are any of those things that you have put into your own work? for anyone I have my two cents especially, um, uh, like I cannot speak for uh, trans experiences specifically but for me, I am an asexual person and aspects are notoriously very, um Like the representation is kind of sad like it's very hard to find stories, uh Centering asexual aromantic a platonic people and I feel like, uh, I would say that We are such a small part of the population that I want every aspect kid Especially to know that they are not alone Because anytime I publish a comic talking about my experiences I will invariably get responses like I thought I was alone I didn't know I didn't know this had a name and it is so so so uncommon to come across another aspect person just in the wild That I feel like, uh, I I really want to tell them that there are other people like you and your experiences are not Like you're not an island or weird So I guess that kind of extends to like the whole lgbtqi plus community Um, I also feel like as someone who is non-binary themselves, um, I I I enjoy like the like stories about trans and non-binary experiences. Um And it's so hard to like capture Like this like whole experience that Is so varied, um in a single piece of media But what I really do enjoy when I see it um is the idea that's explored that I mean like none of it is concrete like all of it is like a lot of it is fluid for some people it is concrete But it is more fluid than you think and I think I see a lot of that a lot more of that now like over the past like few years. Um, but Personally, that's something that I would like to see a lot more like it's okay that You explore one like aspect of yourself and then you find out like maybe two years later that it's not really working for you And I think sort of incorporating that a little bit more Is something personally I would want to see because I think that kind of just like feeds into the fact that like We're all just people we're all just human. Um, and we're always learning and changing so Yeah, thank you so much. Um, let's give a final round of applause to our panel Thank y'all so much again, um Please if y'all would like stay for the next panel, which is queer horror But if not, please check out all of their wonderful works out on the tables right outside the auditorium Thank you all so much