I Belong Here: Identity as Power

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This, named a best book of 2017 by Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, Booklist, The Guardian, Kirkus, and many others, and the forthcoming books Seek You: Essays on American Loneliness (2021), for which she received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and Terrible Men, a graphic novel, all from Pantheon. She is the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer magazine. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, The New Yorker, Oxford American, and many other places.

Maia Kobabe is a graduate of the first ever class in the MFA in Comics program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.. E is also the illustrator of Tom O'Bedlam, a single issue which was accepted into the Society of Illustrator's Comic and Cartoon Art annual and nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2016. Maia's short comics have been published on The Nib and widely anthologized. Before setting out to work freelance full-time, e worked for over ten years in libraries and now writes book reviews for Publisher's Weekly. Gender Queer: A Memoir (Lion Forge) is eir first full-length book. In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

Vita Ayala is a queer Afro-Latinx writer. They have written for DC, Dark Horse, Image, and Valiant Comics, and have creator-owned work through Black Mask Studios (The Wilds) and Vault Comics (Submerged). Magic: The Gathering: Chandra (IDW Publishing) is their latest graphic novel. The rich world of Magic: The Gathering comes to life, revealing new adventures, in this thrilling graphic novel featuring Planeswalker and pyromancer Chandra Nalaar. In the wake of tragedy, Chandra strikes out on her own, determined to protect the Multiverse, no matter the cost to herself. Along the way she'll not only have to fight new threats, but also her own sense of guilt. Fellow Planeswalker and friend Ajani Goldmane tries to intervene, but it's ultimately on Chandra to save herself, especially when a sinister foe emerges from the shadows.