10/01/2025
We are excited to share the list of our exhibitors participating in the Zine Fest. Check out their Bio:
🔵Aidan Vanderwill
Portfolio/Social: https://king-aidan.github.io/
Bio: Aidan Vanderwill is a comic artist who makes humourous diary comics and surreal fiction. He is best distinguished in a crowd as "the guy obsessed with his characters" or "boat nerd".
🔵Alex Clark
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/foodcookalex/
🔵Andrew Tran Vo
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/anbovo?igsh=ZDVqZm55cXp4enZr
Bio: Andrew Vo is a Vietnamese American artist who works at Sidestreet Studio Arts. He draws and make cards.
🔵Arnold Ramirez
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/arnold_ah_um/profilecard/?igsh=NzlnOTQxeHNocjRj
Bio: Arnold Ramirez is a Mexican-American illustrator from Chicago. He likes to draw whenever he has the chance.
🔵Bianca Perez
Portfolio/Social: www.instagram.com/binkz.art
Bio: Miracle Brain is my bizarre, mucky corner of the universe. Inspired by 90s/Y2K cartoon grit, underground humor, and my offbeat brain. I’m Bianca Perez, a Mexican-American cartoonist and storyteller. I make unhinged, colorful worlds
that stick to you like gunk between your teeth.
🔵Cindy Uriostegui
Portfolio/Social: https://www.cattcostudio.com/
Bio: CATTCO is a visual artist and storyteller exploring identity, belonging, and the ways our environments shape who we are. Through her work, she blends personal experience with cultural influences, creating immersive pieces that invite reflection on self-discovery, authenticity, and the interplay between inner and outer worlds.
🔵Da-Shuang
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/justdashuang?igsh=MXdhN29mYXVxZmgxMQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
Bio: Da-Shuang Wu is a Chicago-based teaching artist, animator, and illustrator. Her zines mix everyday absurdities, nature, and neighborhood memories with a dash of humor and heart. Formerly running a community art space in Beijing for nine years, she now blends East and West, art and play, on her prints.
🔵Darya Foroohar
Portfolio/Social: muse.io/daryafarah
Bio: Darya is a Chicago-based cartoonist who writes horror comics, autofiction, and political zines. Her first book, My Eyes, Your Gaze, was published in 2024 by indie press Bridge Books.
🔵Elias Gonzalez
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/whateverelias
Bio: Hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, Elias writes and draws decently enough to be a self-proclaimed “pretty okay” cartoonist. He makes "funny" comics for "mature" readers
🔵Erika Alvarado
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/mochii_bunnii?igsh=MWt5aHB2c2RwMnE2dg==
Bio: I am a q***r latina Chicago based artist that focuses on themes of mental wellness as well as the simple joys of life. Exploring and shaping the idea of just existing. Although I struggle with my own stuff, my art has been my means of reaching out and finding joy again.
🟢Francesca Carletto-Leon
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/cesca_is_making?igsh=bmw0eG43eTJ2N204
Bio: Cesca (they/she) is a game designer and crafter based in Chicago. Her zines feature photography and autobiographical stories which celebrate the beautiful world that we live in. She is also a crocheter, ceramicist, and gardener.
🟢GG Christensen
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/gg.crayon/
Bio: Through comics, Citizen Christensen tells stories picked up from homes throughout the country. In traveling, Citizen has been focusing on utility poles. Their widespread presence and massive stature create an entity that bares constant witnesses to our journeys, both daily and eternal. These cross-like poles include the seen structure itself, as well as the unseen utilities they provide eachother with. This holy network connects us as roadside memorials. They serve as unofficial markers of shared human experience- reminding us of the seen and unseen forces that make us.
🟢Hannah Hallman
Portfolio/Social: https://cottna.neocities.org/
Bio: Hannah Hallman is a le***an cartoonist from Milwaukee. She draws gay comics, her newest graphic novel is called The King’s Companion. She is also a co-organizer of MILK Comic Fest.
Hannah Jill Johnston
Portfolio/Social: https://greenandwiggly.com
Bio: Hannah Jill Johnston is a cartoonist and fiber artist from New Jersey. She received her MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hannah has a passion for creating new adult stories about friendship, identity, and belonging. She currently lives in Chicago where she is watercoloring her debut graphic novel, Swan Song.
🟢Hannah Johnston
Portfolio/Social: https://www.greenandwiggly.com/gallery
Bio: Hannah Jill Johnston is a cartoonist and fiber artist from New Jersey. She received her MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hannah has a passion for creating new adult stories about friendship, identity, and belonging. She currently lives in Chicago where she is watercoloring her debut graphic novel, Swan Song
🟢Isabella Kinnick
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/bella_art1319/
Bio: Isabella Kinnick is currently a student enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. An artist who sticks mainly with materials 2-D in nature, with components building themselves out of traditional mark-making materials such as ink, paint, and graphite, and collage. A style defined with fluid movements, vivid colours, and graphic line work that sucks you into a world of whimsy, energy and perhaps just a little bit of chaos. Isabella's work combines the flirtatious and fun, with complexities that lie beneath the layers or marks that often deal with themes of personal identity, love, heartbreak, and documentation of the whirlwind of her own unique human experience that has been the first twenty years of her life, and continues every day with passion, purpose, and play guiding her to create as much as she can.
🟢Jami Sailor
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/littlejameszine
Bio: Jami Sailor makes (mostly per)zines about home, memory, and place. They occasionally write about movies. Jami isa white, q***r, chronically ill library worker trying to be an okay person. Yes, they go to therapy. They are outgoing (esp at zine events).
🟢Jeanette A
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/rainysaturdaycreative?igsh=em1lMWJ0OTBzbHln&utm_source=qr
Bio: From Milwaukee WI, mostly art, photo and per zines, love the creative outlet.
🟢Jessica
Bio: I teach at Montessori academy of north Hoffman and want to do a zine workshop with my 7-12th graders as we study persuasion, logical fallacies, resistance and propaganda.
🟢John Porcellino
Portfolio/Social: https://www.spitandahalf.com/?s=porcellino
Bio: John Porcellino was born in Chicago in 1968 and lived in Hoffman Estates throughout his teenage years. He has published his autobiographical comics-zine King-Cat since 1989, and run the Spit and a Half Comix Distro since 1993.
🟢Lain Bundalian
Portfolio/Social: lovelesspress.neocities.org
Bio: Loveless Press is an independent nonprofit zinery from Spokane, WA. All zines are free to read forever, since art and information should be accessible for everyone...no strings attached. Currently LP is prioritizing educational zines on media and culture.
🟡Laurin Atkinson
Portfolio/Social: Tripofgoats.com
Bio: Laurin is a writer who processes life through story, shapes curiosity into systems, and harbors an unnatural fondness for detours, details, and diagrams. She writes about memory, identity, parenting, trauma, and the weird logic we build to survive—all in short, nonlinear stories that somehow make sense by the end. She’s especially interested in how we hold memory, how we explain ourselves to ourselves, and what happens when the story you’re telling doesn’t fit the shape of the life you’ve lived. Laurin lives, writes, parents, and maps the mess in a suburb of Chicago where she continues to discover what shows up when she allows herself to move towards meaning.
🟡Leif (It’s Weird Now Press)
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/its.weird.now/
Bio: It’s Weird Now Press is a collection of zines and handmade art books made by Leif. Art zines, perzines, fan zines… and everything inbetween.
🟡Lex Applewhite (Artist's name: Lester Bateman)
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/dudegoo/
Bio: Lester Bateman is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. They publish the quarterly zine Images, which features architecture, landscape, and human ephemera found across the United States.
🟡Liana Fu
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/lettersbyliana
Bio: Liana Fu 傅嘉恩 is a q***r writer and zinemaker from Chicago. As a multidisciplinary artist inspired by the Cantonese diasporic archive, she plays with photography, collage, and printmaking to explore intimacy, process, and nostalgia. Her writing is supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, and the Illinois Arts Council. You can find her work in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Margins, Hyphen Magazine, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere. Read more at lianafu.com and on instagram .
🟡Logan Wilson
Portfolio/Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logan-wilson-5015a5143?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Bio: I’ve been working with Vent2vent vent and duct cleaning services. I’ve been creating graphic design for the company and most recently a comic book coloring pages that my business partner and CEO ‘s son has built
🟡Melody Yang
Portfolio/Social: https://melonfarmart.carrd.co/
Bio: Melody is based in Chicago and makes comics about natural and unnatural life.
🟡Mike Freiheit
Portfolio/Social: Mikefreiheit.com
Bio: Mike Freiheit is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Chicago. He’s made three graphic novels and he likes cats.
🟡Moritz Junker
Portfolio/Social: junkercomics.com
Bio: Moritz Junker from Madison, WI has been creating and self-publishing surreal, humorous comics since age 14. He now lives in Milwaukee, works at alt-comic store Lion's Tooth and is working on a new comic as the "Dandelion Comics Artist in Residence"
🟡Muchen Wang
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/uooart
Bio: Muchen Wang’s work is a testament to her profound connection with the craft and an enduring love for the world around her. Wang’s ultimate goal is to inspire empathy and connection through her work, reminding audiences of the beauty and complexity that define both the world and humanity. Her art not only bridges cultural divides but also fosters understanding and appreciation for the shared experiences that unite us all.
🟣Nadia Stodder
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/oneeyedsuperkid/
Bio: Nadia Stodder, Creator of the Shadow Banshee the Oneeyedsuperkid and more lovable creatures and characters, is a multidisciplinary artist. Her zines and comics can be found all over Chicagoland and NWI at comic shops, book stores and independent businesses .
🟣Nat Quayle Nelson
Portfolio/Social: https://nqn.itch.io/
Bio: Nat Quayle Nelson is a nonbinary game developer, playwright, and zinester. Their zines are mostly personal narratives delivered with biting humor, nerdy pop-culture references, and deep empathy through life's endless contradictions. Most recently, she released an epic perzine trilogy starting with Churn Notice #1: Choosing the Life of Serfdom on an Urban Goat Farm.
🟣Olivia Brill
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/brill.opad?igsh=NHhsNXpybXc1dm51&utm_source=qr https://www.instagram.com/vv_aannii/
Bio: Hi, we’re Zine Fiends! A group of artists based in the Chicago suburbs. Taking inspiration from Zine Club Chicago, we decided to create our own. We hope to bring zines outside of the city and appreciate your support!
🟣Ray
Portfolio/Social: deathblow.gumroad.com
Bio: D3ATHBL0W is a small independent artist collective facing the viscera in the corporate climate. Not only producing zines but comics aswell as short form digital medias.
🟣Rykley Braun
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/rykley.b?igsh=M29kbDI4Z2I3YWhv&utm_source=qr
Bio: I’m a 22 year old animator from the PNW who’s just getting into zines. I like random tidbits of information and would love to share mine with you.
🟣Sanya Safi
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/looptoloop.200?igsh=MXhjbmJ2MDhkaWJsMQ==
Bio: At Loop to Loop, we believe that crochet is more than just yarn and a hook—it's a way to create unique, personalized pieces that tell a story. We're passionate about bringing your crochet visions to life, crafting everything and anything you can imagine, from cozy blankets and stylish accessories to whimsical amigurumi and practical home décor. Our focus is on you, the customer. We understand that everyone has their own style and preferences, which is why we specialize in custom creations. Whether you have a specific design in mind, a favorite color palette, or a particular yarn you adore, we're here to make it happen. We work closely with you throughout the process, ensuring that every stitch is perfect and that the final product is exactly what you envisioned.
🟣Sarah Leeman
Portfolio/Social: https://www.etsy.com/shop/nightfalltoday
Bio: Sarah (nightfalltoday) is a writer & zine creator located in Chicago, IL. She loves writing stories and crafting, and zines provide an opportunity to do both! Her recent vampiric horror story, Sacrificial Love, is now fully available in part or as a complete series, and a few more titles are in the works too.
🟣Soledad Fernandez-Gonzalez
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/kaiahbelly/
Bio: Kaiah Belly is a small business that started with just a sketchbook and love for creating. We make art, prints, stickers, zines and more to add a spark of joy to your everyday. We believe art should be fun, accessible, and something that simply makes you smile.
🟣David Alvarado
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/tuffasaurus/
Bio: David Alvarado is a illustrator, designer and cartoonist from Chicago, IL
🟣Lonely Writers Club
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/lonelywritersclubnw/?hl=en https://bsky.app/profile/lonelywritersclub.bsky.social
Bio: Cofounders Jessicamarie and Stu have collectively been writing poetry and prose for over 30 years. Jessicamarie has one critically acclaimed poetry anthology “Cicadas in the Belly” and has been published by several prestigious literary magazines. Stu spent over a decade in Voice-Over/Broadcast radio before making the shift to the printed word, and has had multiple published works. He holds a Masters Degree in Communications. Our resident artist, Jazmine rounds out the trio of this creative endeavor. We are a group of lonely writers and artists from the Chicago metro area that come together for what we call a “slamshop”, poetry slam, work critique, and zine publishing. With the aim to establish a community that pulls creatives away from their isolation and into a collaborative kinship that allows each writer and artist to improve their skills, gain critical feedback, and better develop their own voice.
🟣the (trans)cribe
Portfolio/Social: https://www.instagram.com/thetrans.cribe/
Bio: Wynter Appleford (they/them/theirs) is a writer, zinester, and recovering academic. Their work speaks to their personal Q***r experience, humanizes LGBTQ+ people beyond the headlines, and visualizes a possible liberated Q***r future.
2,878 Followers, 2,274 Following, 351 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from the (trans)cribe | writer, zinester, artist (.cribe)
