Just a smattering of updates!

First up: I’m honored to be featured in AN OCEAN OF WONDER: THE FANTASTIC IN THE PACIFIC edited by kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, Joyce Pualani Warren, and Cristina Bacchilega! A little about the book:

An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific brings together fifty writers and artists from across Moananuiākea working in myriad genres across media, ranging from oral narratives and traditional wonder tales to creative writing as well as visual artwork and scholarly essays. Collectively, this anthology features the fantastic as present-day Indigenous Pacific world-building that looks to the past in creating alternative futures, and in so doing reimagines relationships between peoples, environments, deities, nonhuman relatives, history, dreams, and storytelling.

Wonder is activated by curiosity, humility in the face of mystery, and engagement with possibilities. We see wonder and the fantastic as general modes of expression that are not confined to realism. As such, the fantastic encompasses fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, fabulation, horror, fairy tale, utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction. We include Black, feminist, and queer futurisms, Indigenous wonderworks, Hawaiian moʻolelo kamahaʻo and moʻolelo āiwaiwa, Sāmoan fāgogo, and other non-mimetic genres from specific cultures, because we recognize that their refusal to adopt restrictive Euro-American definitions of reality is what inspires and enables the fantastic to flourish.

As artistic, intellectual, and culturally based expressions that encode and embody Indigenous knowledge, the multimodal moʻolelo in this collection upend monolithic, often exoticizing, and demeaning stereotypes of the Pacific and situate themselves in conversation with critical understandings of the global fantastic, Indigenous futurities, social justice, and decolonial and activist storytelling. In this collection, Oceanic ideas and images surround and connect to Hawaiʻi, which is for the three coeditors, a piko (center); at the same time, navigating both juxtaposition and association, the collection seeks to articulate pilina (relationships) across genres, locations, time, and media and to celebrate the multiplicity and relationality of the fantastic in Oceania.

The third annual Minicomic Awards virtual ceremony will be held TODAY 3/14 at 3pm PST where FIVE winners will split our $3700 PRIZE POOL! Leslie and I have organized this the past 2 years and we’re excited to fold this into the Co-op so it has more support and longevity. Come celebrate minicomics with us!

I have a short story in Dark Matter INK’s 2024 anthology THE OFF-SEASON ed. by Marissa van Uden & featuring 25 brand-new tales of mysticism, psychedelia, outsiders, obsessions, weird sea life, and more! Pre-orders are available.

The Cartoonist Cooperative turned 1 at the end of February! Here’s an adorable little image of just a small portion of our 800+ (!!!) members to celebrate!

Death in the Mouth Vol 2 is about 75% completed and I’m sending out the first round of backer rewards next week! Here’s the shirts I made for it, very pleased with how they turned out!

And a little bit of paper clay sculpting! I had this idea to make frames but we’ll see how they hold up once I hang them with the thin chains I have in mind…

That’s all for now!