2024 Autoptic Festival Special Guests

Back of Beyond Press

Back of Beyond Press is a small Risograph print press based in Minneapolis, MN. Its focus is on producing artist books and zines, art prints, and mixtapes.

As part of the press’ mission, we provide Risograph print services to the public at sliding scale prices to increase accessibility and awareness for Risograph printing. We also host print workshops on a routine basis to help introduce participants to proper file preparation and the many possibilities available through the Risograph printing medium, and have open submissions for artists to get their zine printed for free as part of our quarterly zine club publication.

Beth Hetland

Beth Hetland is a cartoonist and educator at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent book, TENDER (Fantagraphics), is a psychological thriller with body horror elements. In addition to this work, she collaborates on a variety of projects including interactive mini-comics & a graphic novel, HALF ASLEEP, with Kyle O’Connell.

Bianca Xunise

Bianca Xunise is an illustrator, writer, and educator based out of Chicago, Illinois. With two Ignatz Awards under their belt, Bianca enjoys being a voice for those who march to the beat of their own drum and hopes that their comics are comforting to those who feel like they don’t fit in. In 2020, Bianca became the first nationally syndicated non-binary cartoonist (and the second black woman) when they joined the comic strip Six Chix in 2020 as their first black creator. Xunise has also collaborated with Vogue, The Washington Post, The Nib, and Believer Magazine. When Bianca isn’t doodling away, they are usually at an underground DIY punk show dancing with friends by the Chicago riverside. In April 2024 their graphic novel Punk Rock Karaoke (Penguin Teen) debut with rave reviews. Critics are already calling it “…a gripping narrative, relatable situations, and evocative artwork with an aesthetic that oozes with late-1970s zine flair”  – Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

Blue Delliquanti

Blue Delliquanti is a comic artist and writer based in Minneapolis, MN.

From 2012 to 2020 Blue drew and serialized the Prism Award-winning science fiction comic O Human Star at ohumanstar.com. Blue is also the creator of graphic novels and novellas like Meal (with Soleil Ho), Across a Field of Starlight, and Adversary. They teach comics courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Chad Bilyeu

Chad Bilyeu is a 49-year-old Black American writer, historian, and photographer who has been living in Amsterdam for 15 years. In 2018, he began writing and self-publishing a comic book based on his life as a foreigner, aptly titled Chad in Amsterdam. Chad writes the scripts and collaborates with an international array of artists to bring the comics to fruition. In 2023, Dutch comic publisher Scratch Books collected and republished Chad’s six self-published issues of Chad in Amsterdam as a definitive hardcover compendium. 

Currently, Chad is working on another autobiographical series entitled The Re-Up, which is being released periodically en route to a graphic novel. The Re-Up is written by Chad and illustrated by renowned Dutch children’s book illustrator Juliette de Wit. The Re-Up details Chad’s halcyon days working and studying at Georgetown University, where he, unbeknownst to most, also sold copious amounts of drugs (mostly weed, back when it was illegal and exciting). The Re-Up is a crime story unlike any other, as it details the life of a drug dealer with nuance and depth rarely seen, directly told by the person who lived the life.

Chad in Amsterdam was nominated by Broken Frontier for ‘Best Periodical Series’ in 2021, and in 2023, Chad in Amsterdam received one of fifteen ‘Awards of Excellence’ at MoCCA Fest. Later in 2023, Chad was chosen as the writing resident for the summer semester at the Pedantic Arts Residency in Pittsburgh. Also in 2023, The Re-Up was nominated by Broken Frontier as one of the year’s “best periodical series.”  Most recently, Chad won the prestigious Tim Killiam Prijs in Amsterdam. This annual award is given to “makers who make an original or valuable contribution to the image of Amsterdam.” Along with an award and cash prize, the Grachtenmuseum (Museum of the Canals) hosted an exhibit that features the Chad in Amsterdam project.

Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson (born September 21, 1975) is an American graphic novelist best known for his books Good-bye, Chunky Rice (1999), Blankets (2003), Carnet de Voyage (2004), Habibi (2011), and Space Dumplins (2015). Thompson has received four Harvey Awards, three Eisner Awards, and two Ignatz Awards. In 2007, his cover design for the Menomena album Friend and Foe received a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. His latest work, Ginseng Roots, was serialized in 12 issues by Minneapolis-based publisher, Uncivilized Books, officially celebrating completion at this year’s Autoptic festival.

Laneha House

Laneha House is a family run small press from Breena Nuñez and Lawrence Lindell.

Laneha House is built on the foundation of family, love of comics, zines and coffee. Projects include comics, graphic novels, art books, zines, music and cartoons.
It’s pronounced (La.ney.ha)

Lawrence Lindell (he/they) is an award winning cartoonist, educator, musician and artist from California. He does comes for The New Yorker, Razorcake and has books out with Drawn and Quarterly and Random House Graphic.

His work focusses on Blackness, mental health and queerness.

Breena Nuñez is a Bay Area bred cartoonist and part-time professor living in San Francisco, CA. She creates diary comics that often explore themes surrounding the awkwardness of racism, being a queer Afrodescendiente from the Bay Area, and understanding what it means to be Central American from the US. Their hope as a cartoonist & educator is to help BIPOC folks give themselves permission to express their personal stories through the language of comics.

Breena’s works are primarily self-published as zines through the family run small press she co-founded, Laneha House. You will also find some comics in other publications such as The New Yorker: Daily Shouts and The Nib, as well as in anthologies like Tales From La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, Drawing Power (Eisner Award Winner 2020), Be Gay, Do Comics! (Ignatz Award Winner 2020), and When Language Broke Open.

Late Night Copies Press

Late Night Copies is a Minneapolis-based micro-Press publishing zines about LGBTQ history, arts organizing, and DIY culture.

Maddi Gonzalez

Maddi Gonzalez is a cartoonist from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, but now she lives in the midwest United States somewhere. She drew a book called “Tiffany’s Griffon”, written by Magnolia Porter-Siddell, which is on its way to becoming the world’s best griffon-centered all-ages graphic novel by people whose names both start with the letter “M”. Maddi also drew a graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps story The Haunted Mask. It’s pretty good, I think. I mean, she thinks. Last year she was in the top .01% of listeners for Duncan Sheik. Her favorite song is “Magazines”.

Trung Le Nguyen

Trung Le Capecchi-Nguyen (Trung Le Nguyen, professionally) is an award-winning Vietnamese American cartoonist, artist, and writer from Minnesota.

Trung’s first original graphic novel, The Magic Fish, was published in 2020 through Random House Graphic, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

He has also contributed work both as an author and as an artist for a variety of comics publishers, including DC Comics, Oni Press, Boom! Studios, Image Comics, and Marvel.

Trung has been nominated for an Eisner, a prize at Angoulême (France), a GLAAD award, and has won two Harvey Awards and a Romics (Italy). Trung has also contributed work for DC Comics, Oni Press, Boom! Studios, Image Comics, and Marvel.

He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raises a small flock of very spoiled hens.