on this page:
Briar Rolfe ⋅ Campbell Whyte ⋅ Can Yalcinkaya ⋅ Chris Gooch ⋅ Claudia Chinyere Akole ⋅ Ele Jenkins ⋅ Eleri Harris ⋅ Elizabeth Macfarlane ⋅ Emilie Walsh ⋅ Fionn McCabe ⋅ Gabriel Clark ⋅ Georgina Chadderton ⋅ Gregory Mackay ⋅ Harry Pitt ⋅ Jess Harwood ⋅ Joshua Santospirito ⋅ Kim Lam ⋅ Leela Corman ⋅ Leigh Rigozzi ⋅ Leonie Brialey ⋅ Lucie Towers ⋅ Mandy Ord ⋅ Max Loh ⋅ Mirranda Burton ⋅ Natalia Zajaz ⋅ Nicky Minus ⋅ Owen Heitmann ⋅ Pat Grant ⋅ Safdar Ahmed ⋅ Sam Wallman ⋅ Sanchia Hamidjaja ⋅ Sarah Firth ⋅ Sid Stones ⋅ Sonny Liew ⋅ Soolagna Majumdar ⋅ Thi Bui ⋅ Tom Hart
Briar Rolfe (they/them) is a nonbinary cartoonist and graphic designer who was shortlisted for a Ledger (now Comic Arts Awards of Australia) Award in 2017, and was highly commended by the Kat Muscat Fellowship in 2020. Briar attended CAW 2022 with their graphic novel, Get Your Story Straight, a queer romcom set against the 2017 Marraige Equality plebiscite, planned for release by Hachette Australia in 2024.
Campbell Whyte (he/him) is a Perth-based artist who works predominantly in comics and illustration. His Eisner-nominated graphic novel series Home Time, which was workshopped at CAW, has been met with critical acclaim. When not making comics, he teaches comics making at the children’s art school, Milktooth, that he runs with Elizabeth Marruffo. Campbell manages the monthly Comics Maker Network group and is one of the founders of the annual Perth Comic Arts Festival.
Dr. Can Yalcinkaya (he/him) is a Program Manager at Macquarie University International College, and a comic artist, researcher and musician whose scholarly and creative work feed into each other. He convenes the Graphic Social Science Research Network, a community of researchers who aim to foster and promote scholarly research communicated in the multi-modal medium of graphic novels, and is a founding member of the Comics Studies Society and a member of Centre for Media History. Along with Dr Safdar Ahmed, he founded the anti-racist Muslim metal band, Hazeen and performed in art venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Importantly for CAW, Can has also volunteered for the unenviable position of heading its admissions committee twice in a row now.
Chris Gooch (he/him) is a cartoonist based out of Melbourne, Australia. His first graphic novel Bottled was published in 2017 by Top Shelf, followed by short story collection Deep Breaths in 2019. His second graphic novel Under Earth was originally workshopped at CAW and published in 2021, and went on to win the Aurealis Award for Best Graphic Novel.
Claudia Chinyere Akole (she/her) is an exhibiting artist, freelance illustrator, cartoonist, designer, animator, and educator based in Sydney, Australia (Gadigal and Wangal land). She works as a graphic designer in TV broadcast, as a freelance illustrator, and creates comics and illustrations in her personal practice. She’s an art hag who bleeds pink. At CAW 2022, Claudia workshopped a graphic memoir about years of financial stress, relationship breakdowns, and creative existential woe coming to a head over the course of a few very strange weeks. Or, a story about trying not to die.
Ele Jenkins (they/she) is a multimedia creator and Ledger Award-winning comic artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Ele is a member of Pink Ember Studio and attended CAW 2022 with their project Tension, a memoir that reflects on family history, identity and mental health through knitting.
Eleri Harris (she/her) is a cartoonist, journalist and Features Editor at The Nib until its closure. Her Nib comic serial Reported Missing, workshopped at CAW 2015, was shortlisted for the 2018 Center for Cartoon Studies & Slate Book Review Cartoonist Studio Prize and won Gold at the 2018 Ledger Awards in Australia. Eleri’s work as a comics editor has garnered two Ignatz awards and a Harvey award.
Eleri was the co-director of CAW 2022, to which she brought a draft of her nonfiction science comic book about fertility treatment, and is a selection committee member for CAW 2024.
Dr. Elizabeth MacFarlane (she/her) is the author of Reading Coetzee and a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne. She is the founder and coordinator of Graphic Narratives, Australia’s first university subject entirely devoted to comics and graphic novels, and co-director of graphic novels publishing company Twelve Panels Press. Liz co-founded Comic Art Workshop with Pat Grant.
Emilie Walsh (she/her) is a Melbourne-based visual artist and comics maker. In 2019, Emilie graduated from her PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts, on the ‘Imagination of Adventure’. Her comics have been published by Tree Paper Comics and The Lifted Brow. In 2018, Emilie self-published, with Tree Paper Comics, her debut graphic novel Fuck you Fuck me, as a stand-alone chapter of a longer project on women’s sexuality, and brought the remaining in-progress chapters to CAW 2022. The auto-fiction follows the character of Charlotte as she tries to deal with a sexting addiction and navigates our erotic culture.
Fionn McCabe (he/him) is an artist, cartoonist and educator currently working and living in Sydney. His work has been exhibited in Brooklyn New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, Austin, and Salt Lake City in the US, as well as in Jogjakarta, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Sydney, and other major cities. He is also one of the producers of Read To Me, a live storytelling event designed to showcase the work of cartoonists and other visual storytellers. In 2022, his climate change anxiety one shot Leathery Little Saints was shortlisted by the Comic Arts Awards of Australia, and has recently been translated into French.
Fionn is also a co-director of CAW 2024 and is getting really good at emailing (not in French).
Gabriel Clark (he/him) is a photographer and a producer of multimedia storytelling events. He was co-producer of the Graphic festival at the Sydney Opera House and is co-founder of Read to Me a cult graphic storytelling night in a subterranean bar in Chippendale. He is a lecturer in Design at UTS and is the official CAW photographer and tart boy.
Georgina Chadderton Georgina Chadderton (she/they), AKA George Rex Comics, is a freelance cartoonist based on Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). They are co-director of Papercuts Comics Festival and run comics art workshops with young people when not making their own comics. Gina has been lucky enough to attend several CAW residencies, bringing their first graphic novel project at various stages of its development. Their book Oh Brother is a narrative memoir project about growing up with a brother who has high support needs. CAW has helped Gina to develop their long-form comics making skills and build important bonds with other creators. Oh Brother is scheduled for release by Penguin Random House in 2025.
Gregory Mackay (he/him) is a Melbourne based graphic novelist and cartoonist. His most recent work is the collected comic The Adventures of Anders, portions of which have been shortlisted for the Angouleme Festival. Gregory is currently working on a large-scale history comic about World War One.
Harry Pitt (he/him) is an Indigenous Artist of Fijian & Torres Strait Islander descent living in Wollongong. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts and Graphic Design from the University of Wollongong, Harry has experience in the Visual Design world creating jerseys for the NBL, murals and other projects underway. When Harry isn’t making art, he works as a security guard around Wollongong, taking care of the pubs, clubs, and any place that may require a guard. At CAW 2022, Harry workshopped a contemporary sci-fi comic about a group of Indigenous superheroes fighting to protect the people and history of their land, all the while really fighting the political image of being treated differently because of who they are.
Jess Harwood (she/her) is an environmental campaigner, illustrator and facilitator with more than ten years experience in coal and biodiversity campaigns. Jess has worked on the Stop Adani campaign for the past five years and has used her art to motivate people to join the campaign to stop Australia’s largest coal mine being built. Jess’ art and illustration has been featured on the BBC and ABC, and by many environmental and social justice campaigns. Of Indian and UK origin, Jess lives on Gadigal land in Sydney and is co-founder of South Asians for Climate Justice. Jess brought her first ever longform comic project to CAW 2022 – the story of the campaign to stop Adani’s climate-wrecking coal project in Central Queensland through the perspective of the women of the Stop Adani campaign.
Joshua Santospirito (he/him) lives in nipaluna, lutruwita with his partner, his naughty chooks and two exceptionally well-behaved dogs. He is a musician and multimedia artist but is most well known as being a graphic novelist, having published The Long Weekend in Alice Springs (2013) and Swallows Part One (2015), with The Islands Where We Left Our Ancestors scheduled for release by Scribe in July 2024. At CAW 2022, Josh workshopped Sydney/Purgatorio, a Jungian murder mystery that explores the psychic world of Sydney and its troubled history.
Josh also co-directed CAW 2022 with Eleri Harris, both doing a damn fine job despite global pandemic-related setbacks.
Kim Lam (she/her), aka dangerlam, is a Vietnamese-Australian illustrator, comics artist and writer living and working in Narrm. A 2020 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, her works explore innocence, death and agency in ordinary everyday contexts. She is an avid reader, maker and collector of zines and small-press publications. Alongside her arts practice she works as a veterinarian, which directly informed her canine afterlife comic Good Boy which was awarded a Silver Ledger in 2020.
Kim’s project Endings, workshopped at CAW 2022, continues to draw on this experience to investigate both the mundane and poetic elements of assisted animal death.
Leela Corman (she/her) Leela Corman is an illustrator, cartoonist, and Middle Eastern dancer. She is the creator of numerous works of autobiographical and fictional comics, including You Are Not A Guest (Fieldmouse Press, 2023), Unterzakhn (Schocken-Pantheon, 2012) and We All Wish For Deadly Force (Retrofit/Big Planet, 2016). Victory Parade – a book Leela wasn’t sure about starting when she was at CAW in 2015 – is now scheduled for release through Schocken-Pantheon in 2024.
Leigh Rigozzi is a Tasmanian-based artist. As well as being a fixture of Australia’s zine and comic community, he has exhibited widely and has been a staple of various print collectives including The Rizzeria, Blood & Thunder, and currently Moon Press and its associated gallery Moon Shed. He holds an MFA from Sydney College of the Arts and provided the artwork for CAW’s 2020-2022 site.
Leonie Brialey (she/ they) is a cartoonist, sometimes potter and screenprinter, occasional academic and writer. Her work Raw Feels was workshopped at CAW and made Campbell Whyte cry, a career highlight. Since CAW, she has written Psychic Hotline, published by Glom Press and spends her days between various sheds in her backyard in Coburg, Naarm/ Melbourne.
Lucie Towers (she/her), aka Owlus Tercie, is an illustrator, writer and children’s bookseller from Sydney, Australia. When she’s not reading or selling books, she loves making mini-zines, writing stories, playing D&D and board-games with buddies, and feeding the monsters under her bed your long-lost odd socks (this is, however, a well-kept Secret). In her art/writing practice, she’s been fortunate enough to be selected for the ASA Emerging Illustrator Mentorship Program (2017), AFTRS Talent Camp (2017), and the CBCA Maurice Saxby Creative Development Program (2020, delayed to 2021).
At CAW 2022 she workshopped Lepidopterlalia, a gothic fantasy work that investigates emotional processing and non-verbal communication.
Mandy Ord (she/her) was our master artist at CAW 2022. She is a comics artist, illustrator, educator, and a disability support worker with a long history of self publishing. Mandy’s first book Rooftops (Finlay Lloyd) 2008 was followed by Sensitive Creatures (Allen & Unwin) in 2011, receiving a White Ravens award at the Bologna Book Fair. She has contributed stories to Meanjin, The Age, Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, Going Down Swinging and Trouble Magazine. In 2018 she illustrated her first book for children, Chalk Boy, written by Margaret Wild and published by Allen & Unwin which was shortlisted in 2019 by CBCA and the Queensland Literary Awards for Picture Book of the Year. In 2020, her book When One Person Dies The Whole World is Over (Brow Books) was longlisted for The Stella Prize and shortlisted for the Small Press Network Book of the Year. Mandy’s latest collection of short stories, Bulk Nuts was published by Gazebo Books in 2023.
Max Loh (he/him) is an as-and-when creator of non-fiction and memoir comics who flits between Malaysia and Singapore. While on his journey to find the ideal middle ground of practicality and passion, he’ll gladly stuff his face with all the food he can get his hands on. He attended CAW 2017, and continues to make comics of varying lengths.
Meg O’Shea (she/her) is an Ignatz Award-nominated comic maker based in Sydney (Gadigal and Wangal land). She makes largely non-fiction work about being a Korean adoptee and anything else piques her interest as she does research along the way. In 2022 Meg brought the beginnings of On Paper to CAW. Her first longform work, it covers the development of her adoptee and racial identity while in Australia, then Korea, a search for her birth mother, and the frequently uncomfortable revelations about her home country, birth country and common adoption narratives this entailed.
In 2024, Meg is co-directing CAW with Fionn and never wants to make a website again.
Mirranda Burton (she/her) is a printmaker, animator, educator, and graphic storyteller based in Melbourne. Her first graphic novel Hidden (2011) was published by Black Pepper and released in French as Cachés by La Boîte à Bulles. In 2015, she presented a scruffy nine page idea to the Comic Art Workshop on Maria Island. By 2019, CAW saw it become Underground a full grown 250+ page graphic novel almost ready for publication. It was released in 2021 by Allen & Unwin, and has gone on to win numerous accolades including as a Notable Book at the 2022 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year awards and Eve Pownall Award.
Natalia Zajaz is an artist based in the Blue Mountains. She has been making comics and zines for a long time and her first book Nothing Ventured was published by Finlay Lloyd in 2013. She has worked with Street Art Murals Australia for the Katoomba Street Art Walk and illustrated for The Lifted Brow. At CAW Natalia worked on an autobiographical account of caring for and living with an alcoholic father.
Nicky Minus (they/them) is graphic designer/painter/cartoonist making art to support grassroots causes and the workers’ movement. They are a member of the Workers’ Art Collective working and living on unceded Wurundjeri Land.
Owen Heitmann (he/him) is a cartoonist, publisher of Amplified Press and co-director of South Australia’s Papercuts Festival. After applying unsuccessfully for the first Comic Art Workshop in 2015, Owen had the moxie to apply again in 2017 and this time was accepted, workshopping the first draft of his high school comedy First Dates in Yogyakarta.
Pat Grant (he/him) is the author of two graphic novels Blue and The Grot. He is also a lecturer in Animation in the design school at UTS. Pat co-founded Comic Art Workshop with Elizabeth MacFarlane. He now watches the progress at CAW from afar like a proud grandparent. He lives in Austinmer, NSW, with his sweetheart and two little boys.
Safdar Ahmed (he/him) is a Sydney-based artist, musician and educator. He is a founding member of the community art organisation Refugee Art Project, and member of eleven, a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers.
Safdar is the author of Reform and Modernity in Islam (IB Tauris, 2013) and the Walkley Award–winning documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes from an immigration detention centre (2015). That web comic was expanded into the NSW Premier’s Literary Award-winning graphic novel, Still Alive (2021), available through Twelve Panels Press. He also sings and plays guitar with the anti-racist death metal band Hazeen.
Despite having been unable to attend two CAWs due to circumstances beyond his control, he has still voluntarily taken on the nightmarish role of selection committee member in 2022 and 2024, and we love him for that.
Sam Wallman (he/him) is a cartoonist, comics journalist and labour organiser. He has published graphic reportage in The Guardian, The Nib, The Age, The New York Times and the ABC. He went to Jogjakarta with Comics Art Workshop in 2017 to workshop Our Members Be Unlimited: A Comic About Unions, his first longform book. It was released by Scribe Publications in Australia, the US and the UK in late 2022, and has gone on to garner wide praise and accolades, including being shortlisted for the 2023 University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award.
Sanchia Hamidjaja (she/her) is a mom and an illustrator based in chaotic Jakarta. Sanchia makes monthly comic strips called Problema Nona with her good friend Mariati. The comics are based on stories submitted by women across Indonesia. She is still struggling to finish her very heavy social political graphic novel, a project that triggered her interest in comic journalism, a thing she discovered from spending two weeks at CAW, with amazing human beings.
Sarah Firth (she/her) is based on Wurundjeri Woi wurrung country (aka Melbourne, right near Merri Creek). She is an Eisner Award-winning cartoonist, comic artist and writer, speaker and internationally renowned graphic recorder. Her work has been published by ABRAMS Books, ABC Arts, Frankie Magazine, Graphic Mundi, Penn State University Press, Penguin Random House, Picador, Allen & Unwin, The Nib, Black Inc, and Routledge. Her debut graphic novel Eventually Everything Connects, was workshopped at CAW 2015, 2017 and 2022. Since being published by JOAN (an imprint of Allen & Unwin) in late 2023, it has been recommended by Broadsheet, The West Australian and the Victorian Womens’ Trust amongst others.
Sid Stones (formerly known as Alisha Jade) is a Brisbane-based comics creator and the unstoppable force behind Petrie Press. Their major series, Seven has been collected in an omnibus after being serialised in Oi Oi Oi magazine. They featured in and organised the anthologies Starrytellers and Neither Here nor Hair. For their community work, Sid has been awarded a Platinum Ledger Award.
Sonny Liew (he/him) is a cartoonist from Singapore. His book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, received three Eisner awards, and was the first graphic novel to win the Singapore Literature Prize. On CAW, Sonny has said, “cartooning can sometimes feel like a solitary business – but there are communities and networks out there, and the CAW workshop I had the privilege to attend in 2017 was a brilliant case in point – insightful critiques, good food, warm chatter and getting a chance to see the works of fellow creators in their nascent stage. That aside, I also learnt what ‘dag’ meant.”
Soolagna Majumdar (she/her) is Boorloo/Perth based comic artist, zine maker, illustrator who also runs art/comic workshops for cool young people. Back in 2017 she made a 48 page comic about the liberation of Marge Simpson called Marge Simpson Anime in around a month, which garnered international attention. Since then she has continued to make cute dreamy zines and provided illustrations for places like WA Museum Boola Bardip.
Soolagna brought Food Bird to CAW 2022, a comic about the people who work at a lunch bar hiding an interdimensional portal in the suburbs of East Metro Perth. Specifically the suburb of Belmont, the city of love.
Thi Bui is a cartoonist and teacher in Oakland, California. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams, 2017), workshopped at CAW in 2015, made over thirty best of 2017 book lists, including Bill Gates’ top five picks. It was selected for an American Book Award, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. Thi’s most recent graphic nonfiction project is about immigrant detention and deportation, to be published by One World, Random House.
Tom Hart (he/him) is a cartoonist, teacher and founder of the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) in Gainesville, Florida. He brought his nearly completed Rosalie Lightning to CAW, as well as some exercises and workshop experience from running similar workshops in the states. CAW was a life-altering experience for him. He met life-long friends and peers and is so grateful for his time there.
