Tom is the New York Times Bestselling author of Rosalie Lightning and the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in the Comics Journal and other comix publications. Tom has been called “one of the great underrated cartoonists of our time” by Eddie Campbell and “one of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Scott McCloud. Before founding SAW,

Tom was a core instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC for 10 years. Tom’s former students include award winning-cartoonists Dash Shaw, Sarah Glidden, Box Brown, Leslie Stein, and many others.  

Maureen Burdock, MFA PhD, is the creator of Queen of Snails: A Graphic Memoir (Graphic Mundi 2022) and Feminist Fables for the Twenty-First Century (McFarland 2015). She is also the maker of numerous short comics contained in anthologies, including the opening piece in the Eisner-Award-winning Menopause: A Comics Treatment. Burdock has published a number of essays on comics, trauma, and memory. She was born in Black Forest, Germany, and grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales and children’s books. She moved to the Chicago area with her mother after first grade. She learned English quickly by challenging herself to read all of the children’s books on the shelves of her local public library. Burdock won her first prize for an illustrated short story about two hot dogs who bravely escaped from a frying pan…. only to be carried off by a stray dog! The award included a meeting with a published children’s book author. Burdock knew that her destiny was to become a writer and illustrator. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her wife and boxer dog.

Vanessa is an illustrator and cartoonist currently living in Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaniel Rage (Buenaventura Press, 2005) (re-released in March 2017 by Drawn and Quarterly) and Make Me a Woman, (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010).

Most recently she was the designer and comics editor at Popula, where she also posted some stories. Other comics and illustration clients include: The Paris Review, The New York Times, Vogue, SpongeBob Comics, Tablet, and Amplify Education. 

Vanessa draws strips from her daily diary, centering on youth, motherhood, relationships with men, and eventually her longtime boyfriend. Her intimacy, self-deprecation, and candor have deservedly earned her many accolades and awards. Her deft comedic touch, lush color, and immediacy set her apart not only as one of the premier cartoonists, but as one of the leading humorists for her generation, too.

Find Vanessa on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Elizabeth Trembley, Ph.D, is the author of the graphic memoir Look Again (Street Noise, 2022), which was shortlisted for the Graphic Medicine International Collective’s Award.

Look Again is the story of walking her dogs in the woods, and finding a dead body. Trauma can make truth hard to find. Have you ever experienced a terror, grief, or confusion so great that when you try to share it you can only find shattered images floating in darkness? You try over and over, but can’t tell the story, to yourself or to anyone else.

Look Again presents us with six variations of the same event, seen through the different lenses caused by other life revelations. It explores the fragmenting nature of trauma by tracing the convoluted evolution of the author’s story, a process often experienced by trauma sufferers and their loved ones.

She is also a Lambda Literary Award-winning mystery novelist (Whacked, pen name Josie Gordon), and storytelling teacher of more than three decades. 

She trained in literature, writing, and innovation and creativity in places as diverse as the University of Chicago, Disney University, and SAW. Through her classes, hundreds of students have reflected on their lives through graphic memoir comics, drafted their first novels, and explored personal essays in prose and comics.