Ariel Ries ⋅ Aśka ⋅ Can Yalçinkaya ⋅ Clarence Dass ⋅ Eloise Grills ⋅ Emil Wilson ⋅ Emilie Walsh ⋅ Fionn McCabe ⋅ Lee Lai ⋅ Leigh Rigozzi ⋅ Max Loh ⋅ Meg O’Shea ⋅ Reimena Yee ⋅ Robin Tatlow-Lord ⋅ Sarah Searle ⋅ Sophie Yanow ⋅ Tara Black
Ariel Slamet Ries is a Naarm-based Ignatz-award winning cartoonist and the author of graphic novels Witchy and Cry Wolf Girl. They’re interested in telling stories about imperfect marginalised characters dealing with real-world dilemmas in fantastical settings. They just wrapped Strange Bedfellows—a queer YA sci-fi romance about dreams, and their first graphic novel with a major publisher, due for release in April 2025.
At CAW 2024 Ariel will be workshopping Spring Tide (working title), a magical realist YA comic set in a lightly-fictionalised version of Australia’s East coast. It follows Tam, a high schooler navigating a complicated relationship with her best friend Iphigenia, who has just walked out of the ocean—changed, but alive and breathing—after being the sole victim of a tsunami two years prior. Tam finds herself juggling old and new friendships, devotion, grief, and loyalty, while each day it seems like Iphi’s heart drifts further and further out to sea.
Aśka, (pronounced Ash-kar), is an energetic visual storyteller, comics maker and a science communicator living in Boorloo (Perth), who is insanely passionate about visual literacy. She has visually collaborated on more than ten books and comics, including the CBCA Notable, and Stonewall Honor YA graphic novel Stars in Their Eyes, (with Jessica Walton). Aśka is a recipient of several government Arts grants, prizes, and the May Gibbs Fellowship.
When they’re not working in their studio on the next cathartic comic, Aśka is travelling across Australia teaching drawing-as-a-language to enthusiastic audiences of all ages.
At CAW 2024 Aśka will be workshopping Death and Borewater, a wordless graphic novel, where multiple stories unfold simultaneously on different scales. A sensory love poem to the summer scorched Australia and the inhabitants (and victims) of the daily churnings of suburbia.
Dr. Can Yalçınkaya is a Turkish academic in media studies at Macquarie University, Australia. His key research areas are transnational media, diaspora studies, activism, comics and graphic novels, and arts-based research. He is also a multidisciplinary artist, musician, editor, curator and a member several collectives, including the Refugee Art Project, Other Worlds (of the Zine Fair fame), the Parallel Effect and Hunar. His work has been published in anthologies and publications such as Samandal, The Lifted Brow, Sequentials and Continuum.
At CAW 2024, Can will be workshopping the creative non-fiction autoethno/graphic novel, Taksim*, which provides accounts of the life narratives of migrants from the Balkans and the Middle East (in particular, Greece, Turkiye and Lebanon) through conversations on their music collections on physical media (records, CDs, cassettes), bringing to the fore affective experiences of identity, belonging and estrangement in host countries.
* A musical tradition of improvisation, common to Greek, Arabic and Turkish music (ταξίμι [taksimi] in Greek, تَقْسِيم: [taqsim] in Arabic).
Clarence Dass is a self taught cartoonist living in Suva, Fiji. He has worked both traditionally and digitally on a variety of projects in many different styles and themes. While drawing inspiration from cartoons and comic books, Clarence has a deep love and appreciation for Pacific culture which reflects in his work. Clarence’s debut comic Sala Ni Yalo: Path of the Shades was published by Living the Line in 2022.
Clarence will be bringing Kania to CAW 2024 – a zombie horror comic set against the historic backdrop of pre-colonial Fiji. A priest, accompanied by a group of Bati ( iTaukei warriors) set off to find a group of missing missionaries. What finds them is a terrible plague spreading across the islands, turning its victims into ravenous, flesh eating zombies. War clubs smash zombie skulls and flintlock pistols are locked and loaded, in the savage zombie apocalypse of Kania.
Eloise Grills is a writer and visual artist living on Wadawurrung country. She has published two chapbooks and one full-length memoir in illustrated essays, big beautiful female theory, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize. Her comics, essays and poetry have been published by The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Rumpus, The Nib, Red Room, Cordite, and many others. She has received many awards, including the Melbourne Writers Prize in 2023, and has been a Creative-Australia-funded resident of the Keesing Studio at the Cite Internationale Des Artes, in Paris. She is currently completing a PhD in creative writing practice at RMIT, exploring risk and animality in hybrid literary forms.
Eloise will be bringing her first full-length graphic novel to CAW 2024, Animal Trying to Escape. It explores the borders of consciousness, examining what it would mean for humans to embrace their animality, and the lure of cages, figurative and literal.
Emil Wilson is an art director, illustrator, and comic artist based in San Francisco.
Emil will be bringing The Nightingales to CAW 2024 – a graphic novel based on real events. “In 1985, a man with AIDS and his two dogs moved into our home in small-town Oregon. Their presence—as well as a close friendship that blossomed between this man and my teenage sister—irrevocably alters the course of the family.”
Emilie Walsh is an artist and educator based between Melbourne and Marseille (Fr). In 2019, Emilie graduated from her PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, on the ‘Imagination of Adventure’. Since, Emilie has completed a six months residency at Testing Grounds, which led to a solo show in early 2020 at Fortyfive Downstairs Gallery in Melbourne. She has exhibited her work in Australia and overseas, including at the Abbotsford Convent, George Paton Gallery, Arcade Gallery (in Trocadero) and No Vacancy.
In 2021, Emilie opened Couleur, a small artist-led studio whose goal is to be a gateway into printmaking. Emilie’s creative work focuses on community-based practice and she ties her creative outcomes with engagement and educational programs. Her comics have been published by Tree Paper Comics and The Lifted Brow and she is currently working on a long-form comics project about women’s sexuality.
In 2018, Emilie self-published with Tree Paper Comics her long zine Fuck you Fuck me, as a stand-alone chapter of a longer project on women’s sexuality. Emilie has brought the project to CAW 2022 which has led the project to evolve to a collection of short stories, mixing auto-fiction and essay on different aspect of sex in the 21st century : sexting, vaginismus, sexual abuse, polyamory, queerness.
Emilie will bring the script and thumbnail to CAW 2024.
Fionn McCabe is an educator, print maker and cartoonist living on Gadigal/Wangal. He is a co-founder and producer of Read To Me and one of the Comic Art Workshop’s current co-directors. He is working on a collection of mostly true essays about parenting, grief, climate change, and other serious topics that he hopes will turn out really funny.
Lee Lai is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (known as Montreal, Quebec). She has made comics for The New Yorker, McSweeneys and The New York Times, and her graphic novel Stone Fruit was released in 2021 with Fantagraphics, Sarbacane, Coconino and other publishers.
Lee is a CAW 2024 Master Artist
Leigh Rigozzi is a multidisciplinary artist based in nipaluna/Hobart. His work ranges between painting, printmaking, publishing, and graphic storytelling. He has exhibited his paintings and drawings widely, been a founding member of print collectives including the Rizzeria and Blood & Thunder, and self-published dozens of zines and comics over a span of two decades.
At CAW 2024 Leigh will be workshopping Lot’s Wife, a reimagining of a Biblical story that never seemed quite fair. The Bible treats women terribly and is full of outcasts and crazies. This narrative will be an attempt to retell the story from the perspective of some of its most hard-done-by characters. Unlike other Bible comics, it’s a very loose adaptation that isn’t afraid to take things out of context or make up new parts entirely. Leigh has been thinking about this project for the past eight years and is taking it to Comic Art Workshop to decide whether to finish it or to ditch it completely.
Max Loh is a comics maker and voracious eater. Since his last visit to the Comic Art Workshop, he has co-authored the comic book We’ll Eat When We’re Done with Dave Chua, organised a CAW-inspired Weekend Comic Workshop in Malaysia, and had his work published by The Nib, Image Comics, Maplé Comics, and more (Most of which are available online). His current mission during the weekend is to work on his book while hunting for the best Banh Mi restaurant in Singapore.
At CAW 2024, Max will be diving deeper into the same project he’s been refining since his first CAW in 2017 – a long-term comic piece focused on the attitudes and foodways in Southeast Asia and beyond, where he hopes to sparse his thoughts on cultural culinary heritage, sustainability, and the way forward while celebrating the joy of eating.
Meg O’Shea is a comic maker, illustrator and research assistant based on Gadigal and Wangal Country, NSW. A Korean adoptee, she makes largely autobiographical and non-fiction work concerning personal history and adoption-related issues which has been featured in publications including Liminal Magazine, The Nib, The Comics Journal and anthologies such as the Eisner Award-winning Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment and Survival.
She is the other co-director of this year’s CAW, at which she will be workshopping her first graphic novel On Paper. An extension of her past work, it is an autobiographical piece charting a confrontation of identity, history, belonging, bureaucracy and beer from Keating-era Australia to COVID-era South Korea.
Reimena Yee is a strange and fancy graphic novelist, illustrator and designer originally from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and currently based in Melbourne, Australia. She is also the curator behind the upcoming Comics Devices Resource and the co-founder and co-organiser of UNNAMED and the Cartoonist Cooperative.
At CAW 2024, Reimena will be working on Book 3 of Alexander, the Servant & the Water of Life – the 21st century graphic novel retelling of the Alexander Romance, a nearly 2000 year old literary tradition recounting the legendary life and accomplishments of Alexander the Great.
Robin Tatlow-Lord (she/her) is an illustrator, cartoonist, writer, arts educator and all-round lover of storytelling. Robin has illustrated three picture books and a forthcoming junior fiction series, In 2021 she was shortlisted for the CBCA Award for a New Illustrator. She has also been creating zines and minicomics for almost 20 years. In 2019 her short autobiographical comic Small Mortal Mammals was shortlisted for the Comic Arts Awards of Australia (formerly the Ledger Awards). Her work is vivid, expressive and empathetic, conveying the ‘big feelings’ of life. Robin lives in Adelaide, on Kaurna land. When she isn’t drawing she plays roller derby, runs kids’ art workshops and chases around after her boisterous, book-loving toddler.
At CAW 2024 Robin will be workshopping a middle-grade graphic fiction series about two very different siblings navigating the ups and downs of life, school, sport, friendship and identity. Robin is excited to work with the CAW cohort, and to tell funny and positive stories about diverse, flawed and caring kids and teens.
Sarah Winifred Searle originally hails from spooky New England, USA and now lives in sunny Perth, Australia. They write and draw comics and prose, exploring themes of identity, health, relationships, and history across many genres. Their graphic novel The Greatest Thing is a Lammy Award and CBCA Book of the Year finalist, and a Prime Minister’s Literary Award winner.
Sarah will be bringing a dark comedy about a scholarship rivalry that ends up far more complicated than anticipated to CAW 2024.
Sophie Yanow is queer artist and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her graphic novel The Contradictions (Drawn & Quarterly) won the 2019 Eisner Award for Best Webcomic. Her work has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Comics, a Publishers Triangle Award, Ignatz, Ringo, and Harvey awards, and longlisted for the Believer Book Award. Yanow is also the author of What is a Glacier? (Retrofit) and War of Streets and Houses (Uncivilized Books) and her comics have appeared at The New Yorker, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nib, and The Paris Review. She has been a MacDowell Fellow, and her translation of Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying received the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation from French. Yanow previously taught at the Center for Cartoon Studies, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and The Animation Workshop in Denmark. She currently teaches in the MFA in Comics at the California College of the Arts.
Lee is a CAW 2024 Master Artist
Tara Black is an Aotearoa New Zealand cartoonist and visual chronicler of bookish events. Their first graphic novel, This Is Not a Pipe, was published in 2020. You can find their comics in many places, including Rat Magazine, Salt Hill Journal, Takahē and their website.
At CAW 2024, Tara will be workshopping Medusa Framed: “When Vi finds a stack of unpublished comic pages about Medusa she begins to suspect they were created by Janet Frame. As she embarks on an investigation to figure out their provenance things are tense at home. Her partner, Yale, and brother, Stef, have no problem with Meadow staying with them rent free but Vi thinks Meadow has overstayed her welcome.”
