On Saturday, Jan 19 2019, I had the pleasure of hosting a panel called Scripting Our Stories: Black Women Writers in Comics which closed out the Black Comic Cook Festival, held at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, NY. The panelists included previous The Radical Geeks guest Vita Ayala who’s written Black AF: Devil’s Dye (Black Mask), Livewire (Valiant), Submerged (Vault) and more! Regine Sawyer, the founder of Women In Comics Collective International and her own publishing company LockettDown Productions was also there to talk about her comics Ice Witch and Eating Vampires. Along with Jamila Rowser, the influencer behind Straight Outta Gotham and girlgonegeek, who is also the co-founder of worldwide organization Geek Girl Brunch that recently launched her own comic book Wash Day. And I was really excited to mee the Gibbs Sisters Shawnelle and Shawnee Gibbs, who wrote The Invention of E.J. Whitaker and have written and produced for everyone from the Food Network to Discovery Channel.
Instead of talking about why black women deserve to be writing comics (because I am tired of that conversation honestly), we talked about what nuances black women, LGBTQ, and other marginalized voices bring to their stories that the mainstream often misses. We also talked about how black women creators can help other black women creators to make moves in the industry. In case you missed the panel, you can rewatch the livestream below.
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