SPX continues to ramp up announcements for its September 2023 edition – and here come the international special guests. Prospective attendees can now expect to see Ana Penyas (Spain), Paul Gravett (UK), Jillian and Mariko Tamaki (Canada), Reinhard Kleist (Germany), and Michael Cherkas (Ukraine-Canada) at the show this year, taking place the weekend of September 9-10.
The guest breakdown:
- Ana Penyas (Spain)’s 2018 graphic novel Estamos todas bien [We’re All Just Fine] has just been published in English from Fantagraphics. It is a graphic biography of Penya’s grandmothers who bore witness to fascist Spain in the time and the turbulence of the late 1970s and 1980s.
- Paul Gravett (UK) is – according to the PR – making his first US comics festival appearance at SPX 2023. An authority on all things comics and holder of many cap feathers – he has been a publisher, festival runner (co-founder of Comica), exhibition curator and writer. His latest book is a monograph of Finnish Moomin creator Tove Jansson for Thames & Hudson’s The Illustrators series.
- Jillian and Mariko Tamaki (Canada) – collaborators of critically acclaimed, award winning comics. This September will see the release of their much-anticipated third collaboration following Skim and This One Summer with queer romance Roaming from Drawn & Quarterly
- Reinhard Kleist (Germany) has made a name for himself producing standout graphic biographies of such personalities as musicians Johnny Cash, Nick Cave; political leader Fidel Castro; sportspeople Harry Haft, Emile Griffith and Samia Yusuf Omar. He has now turned to depicting the life and career of David Bowie – more specifically the rise and fall of his Ziggy Stardust persona in a multipart graphic novel, the first instalment of which has just released in English from SelfMadeHero
- Michael Cherkas (Ukraine-Canada) is the co-author and artist of The Silent Invasion, The Purple Ray (with Larry Hancock), Suburban Nightmares (Larry Hancock and John van Bruggen), and The New Frontier (with John Sabli’c). Red Harvest – coming later this year – is his first full length graphic novel as sole author, telling a fictional tale based on real events and stories relating to the Ukrainian famine induced by the Soviet Union in winter 1932-33 and the deep scars it has left on memory.
