Speakers
Aaron Billings
Aaron Billings is a comics and textile artist working in Narrn/Melbourne. His work is interested in sociality, communication and utopian socialist/queer imaginaries. He is working on a serialised comic, Beatitudes of the Beat, published by Glom Press. He is the artist for the weekly Substack The Paris End and a regular contributor of comics to Crikey. He also runs the comics reading night Speaking to Pictures at Pink Ember studio, a queer ARI that he co founded. He is also the host and organiser of Speaking to Pictures events at the Melbourne Alternative Comics Festival.
Ariel Slamet Ries
Ariel Slamet Ries is an Ignatz-award winning cartoonist born and based in Naarm/Melbourne. After studying animation in Denmark for 4 years while making their webcomic “Witchy”, they lost their degree in the post and unceremoniously bumbled into making comics for a living.
Ariel is interested in using a fantastical lens to examine the mundane, and curating empathy for flawed characters. Their latest graphic novel “Strange Bedfellows” was Highly Commended in the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and was nominated for Nebula, Harvey, and Aurealis Awards.
Bailey Sharp
Bailey Sharp is a cartoonist, publisher and educator, originally from Atlanta, now living in Naarm. She is one of the administrators of Glom Press, a Risograph printer and comics publisher and co-organiser of the Other Worlds zine fair.
Bernard Caleo
Bernard Caleo has made an annual anthology, a feature documentary and a doctorate, all featuring Australian comics. He is the graphics editor for Meanjin.
Bruce Mutard
Bruce Mutard is a comics maker, publisher and researcher. His graphic novels include The Sacrifice, The Silence and The Bunker. His latest graphic novel Souffre Douleur was published in France. He has been director of the Comic Arts Awards of Australia, has a Master’s and PhD in comics research entitled The Erotics of Comics. He is a founding organising committee member and director of the Melbourne Alternative Comics Expo (MAKE). His forthcoming graphic novel Tigerland will be published by Allen & Unwin in 2027.
Campbell Whyte
Campbell Whyte is a passionate comic creator, educator and community builder. His award-winning graphic novels Home Time (2017) and Luna Express (2026), boldly blend auto-fiction with pop-genres, embedded in a uniquely Australian cultural landscape. He is the co-director (with Elizabeth Marruffo) of the Milktooth School of Art and Stories (Perth), where he teaches comic courses to over 400 students each year, and is also the co-founder and current Chairperson of the Perth Comic Arts Festival.
Danielle Binks
Danielle Binks is a Melbourne-based writer and literary agent with Jacinta di Mase Management. She is the author of bestselling middle-grade book The Year the Maps Changed, and the award-winning young adult short story collection; Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology. Her latest middle grade novel is WWI historical, Shakespeare in the Orchard. Danielle also teaches Fiction & Young Adult Writing in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at her alum, RMIT University.
Eleri Harris
Eleri Harris (she/her) is an Eisner award-winning editor, cartoonist and children’s author working on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country in Australia’s national capital. Her non-fiction history, science and reportage comics have been exhibited and published all over the world. Best known as the Features Editor at the late comics website and magazine, The Nib, Eleri is also the author of the CBCA award winning picture book, A Loo of One’s Own and the co-author of the Eisner award nominated book Making Nonfiction Comics with Shay Mirk. She loves drawing tiny pictures in her studio at Gorman Arts Centre, playing make-believe with her kids and walking in the bush.
Eloise Grills
Eloise Grills is an award-winning artist and writer living on unceded Wada Wurrung land. Her illustrated memoir-in-essays, big beautiful female theory was published by Affirm Press in 2022. The book has been shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize. She is currently a PhD Candidate at RMIT University researching risk and animality in hybrid literary forms and is working on her first illustrated novel.
Erica Wagner
Erica Wagner is an award-winning editor and publisher with over forty years’ experience in the book industry. She has worked on many ground-breaking books for children and young adults at Penguin Books Australia, Duffy & Snellgrove and Allen & Unwin, where she also established a graphic novel list. The first children’s book editor to receive the Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellowship in 1999, Erica was awarded the Dromkeen Medal in 2017, the Australian Book Industry’s Pixie O’Harris Award in 2021 and the Australian Publishers Association’s George Robertson Award in 2022. In 2015 Bernard Caleo, Elizabeth MacFarlane and Erica founded the graphic novel micro-press Twelve Panels Press, publishing Safdar Ahmed’s multi-award-winning Still Alive in 2021. The first book she illustrated, Hope is the Thing by Johanna Bell, won the 2024 CBCA New Illustrator Award and the 2024 Wilderness Society’s Environment Award for Children’s Literature. Passionate about creative collaborations and visual storytelling, she is currently a publishing consultant with her own active art practice.
Georgina Chadderton
Georgina Chadderton (she/they) is an awkward yet friendly Australian cartoonist with an undying love of eating snacks, drinking green tea, patting dogs and playing roller derby. Although Georgina has been published all over the globe, Oh Brother is her first full-length graphic novel. When they’re not making comics, Georgina co-directs Papercuts Comics Festival, runs comics-making workshops and reads comics by their favourite comics makers (basically, it’s all comics, all the time). Georgina lives on Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide) in South Australia with her partner Owen and their distressingly large collection of books.
Joshua Santospirito
Joshua is a multimedia artist, musician and graphic novelist living in Lutruwita / Tasmania. Josh has made three graphic novels, edits comics for Island magazine and likes organising his veggie patch in Spring. He is one half of the beloved experimental classical band Bing/Santospirito and is known for creating cross-media performances for art festivals.
Katie Zhang
Katie Zhang, known online as Gentle Coda, is an illustrator, manga artist, and content creator. Her award-winning debut comic, The Girl I Left Behind, was created under the Comic Creator Fellowship by Centre for Stories and PCAF. She’s currently self-publishing her manga Aniline on Instagram (@anilineofficial), where she explores this coming of age story about growth and love with sensitivity. Katie also nurtures a cozy space for creatives on Instagram and YouTube (@gentlecoda).
Kelly Bull
Kelly Bull is a comics creator and illustrator based in Naarm who creates original fiction for young adults across various genres. She makes the adventure webcomic Vainglorious and is currently working on her debut graphic novel trilogy HOUSE HUNTERS. When not drawing, Kelly spends her time juggling too many interests, which include everything from aquarium shrimp keeping and textile arts, to heavy metal
Laura J Carroll
Laura J Carroll makes nonfiction comics about Australian lives, communities and places. She’s the author of Making the Shrine (2024), which won an award from the Children’s Book Council of Australia, and Plinth D
Mandy Ord
Mandy Ord is a Naarm (Melbourne) based cartoonist with a long history of self publishing. Her book When One Person Dies The Whole World Is Over published by Brow Books was longlisted for The Stella Prize in 2020 and shortlisted for the Small Press Book Network Book of the Year. Her first illustrated children’s book Chalk Boy, published by Allen & Unwin and written by Margaret Wild was shortlisted for Picture Book of the Year in 2019 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. She is also the author of Rooftops, Sensitive Creatures, Bulk Nuts and Sassy. A French edition of Rooftops (Sur Les Toits) was published by The Hoochie Coochie in 2021 and Sensitive Creatures (Créatures Sensibles) in 2026.
Mirranda Burton
Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Mirranda Burton is an artist and graphic novelist living and working on Wurundjeri land/Melbourne, Australia. She has more than twenty years of experience working between printmaking, independent and commercial animation, education, illustration and graphic storytelling.
In 2011 her first graphic novel Hidden was published by Black Pepper Publishing, receiving a Gold Ledger for Excellence in Australian Comics and an Aurealis Award for Best Graphic Novel. In 2021 Allen & Unwin published her second graphic novel Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia’s War in Vietnam, which received the Readings YA Literature Award and a Bronze Ledger from The Comic Arts Awards of Australia. Both Hidden and Underground have been published in French by La Boîte à Bulles. Underground was shortlisted in 2024 for La sélection du prix Artémisia de la bande dessinée féminine.
Naomi Perry
Naomi Perry is a Literary Agent at Gildlings, a division of The Jacky Winter Group, where she represents a roster of illustrators, picture book creators and graphic novelists. With over a decade of experience in the publishing industry, Naomi began her career at literary agencies in London before moving to Penguin Random House New Zealand. At Gildlings, she works closely with creators to develop their work and connect them with publishing opportunities. She is passionate about championing fresh voices and helping great work find its audience.
Rachel Ang
Rachel Ang is an artist and writer who makes comics. Their comics and words have been published in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Meanjin, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Cordite and Loom. Their latest book, a graphic short story collection titled I Ate The Whole World to Find You, was published last year by Drawn and Quarterly and Scribe. Rachel was the winner of last year’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, for their fiction piece Thalassophobia.
Reimena Yee
Reimena is strange and fancy award-winning cartoonist*, illustrator, scholar, freelance editor, educator and festival organiser. Her graphic novels and webcomics are published and translated worldwide, with recognition from multiple international awards. She is also the co-founder of the international peak body, Cartoonists United; co-founder and organiser of Melbourne Alternative Comics Expo (MAKE); and the researcher behind the Comics Devices Library, an online library naming, defining and cataloguing the visual-narrative devices used in comics. Reimena is based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia), and is active in both the Australian and South East Asian comics ecology.
Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan grew up in Perth and works as an artist, writer and filmmaker in Melbourne. He is best known for illustrated books in a variety of styles combining surrealist imagery and social commentary, widely translated throughout the world and enjoyed by readers of all ages. Shaun is the recipient of an Academy Award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Kate Greenaway Medal. His most recent book is the graphic novel Hometown.
Sophie Splatt
Sophie Splatt is a senior editor of children’s and young adult books at Allen & Unwin. She has extensive experience editing fiction, non-fiction, and trade and reference titles for adults and children, and has worked with many acclaimed Australian authors and illustrators. She has received the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Mentorship, an APA/Copyright Agency Publishing Internship, the Australia Council Seagull School of Publishing Residency in Kolkata and participated in the APA Residential Editorial Program. As the 2023–24 Beatrice Davis Editorial Fellow, she researched graphic novel editing and publishing in the United States.
