ICAF 2025 Keynote Speaker & Guest Artists
Keynote Speaker
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Jorge Santos, Jr. is an award-winning scholar of comics and multiethnic literatures and an Associate Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. His fields include Latina/o/x literature, Asian American literature, Multiethnic Literatures of the United States (MELUS), immigrant/migrant literature, ethnic studies, American cultural studies, composition (particularly English Language Learner pedagogy), and comic studies. His book, Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement: Reframing History in Comics, was awarded the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society in 2020.
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Guest Artists
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Mary Fleener got into the comics world by self-publishing her own work in the mid 80s’, and is best known for her title, Chicken Slacks, an anthology of illustrated song lyrics by various contributors. Her first solo title was HOODOO in 1988, which were cartoon adaptations of Zora Neale Hurston’s work, and this inspired her do her own autobio stories in the series Slutburger (5 issues), and these were collected in the book LIFE OF THE PARTY (Fantagraphics, 1994). Since then her work has appeared in many anthologies such as Twisted Sisters, Weirdo, Wimmen’s, Hotwire, Drawing Power, Mineshaft, Buzzard, and others. Her first Young Adult graphic novel was Billie the Bee (2016, Fantagraphics), and she is currently working on a 200 plus page “bar band memoir” called The Happy Hour. She has also done illustration work for many magazine, paints with acrylics on canvas, black velvet oil painting, and works with clay making functional items. Fleener also plays electric bass, guitar, dulcimer, and is learning drums. She’s been a semi professional musician since the 70s’, and continues to play gigs with her husband in a band called The Wigbillies. She is also an avid organic gardener. Fleener’s goal is to never grow up and maintain a healthy distrust of authority.
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Breena Nuñez is a Bay Area bred cartoonist and part-time adjunct professor teaching Race & Comics at California College of the Arts. 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. Nowadays they are sharing laughs with their baby over a cup o’ joe brewed by her spouse (Lawrence Lindell), and writing as many stories for future comic strips about motherhood in our current time and continuing to work on their graphic memoir, Morena. 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.
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Jose Trinidad Camacho Orozco, better known as "Trino," is a celebrated Mexican writer, cartoonist, and comic strip artist. Possessor of an acid and direct humor, his cartoons cover very different themes, from children's jokes to crude political criticism and satire. He is the creator of El Santos alongside Jose Ignacio Solorzano "Jis," Fabulas de Policias y Ladrones (Fables of Cops and Crooks), and Don Taquero among many others. Trino is a recipient of the Inkpot Award at Comic-Con in 2022, La Catrina Cartoon Prize at the International Cartoon and Comic Strip Meeting in 2022, the Mexican National Prize for Journalism in Political Cartoons in 2000, and many honors.
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