A2CAF: Small + Indie Press | Saturday, October 3, 2026
AADL Downtown Library
Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF): Small + Indie Press is a one-day venture into the world of small press comics publishing. This event offers attendees the chance to meet comic artists and learn about the art of creating comics outside of a traditional publisher. Due to the content of many independently published books, this event is intended for a teen and adult audience. A2CAF: Small + Indie Press is created in partnership with Athenaeum Comic Art.
Click here to apply to be a vendor at A2CAF: SIP 2026! Applications will close at 11:59pm on Monday, July 6th.
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2026 A2CAF: Small + Indie Press Headliners
Nate Powell
Nate Powell is a National Book Award-winning cartoonist who began self-publishing as an Arkansas teenager in 1992. Creating both fiction and nonfiction, his work includes Fall Through, Save It For Later, Come Again, civil rights icon John Lewis’s March trilogy, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and more. Powell’s work has received multiple Eisner and Ignatz Awards, ALA and YALSA distinctions, the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award, the Jack & Roz Kirby Award for Independence, the CXC Transformative Work Award, and is a two-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next graphic novel, Diana, will be released October 6, 2026 by Abrams ComicArts.
Katie Skelly (b. 1985) is an American cartoonist and creator of Fantagraphics titles Heaven (2026), The Agency (2023), Maids (2020), and My Pretty Vampire (2017). She is the creator of Bad Girl Tarot and Bad Girl Oracle, the editor/publisher of the comics horror anthology Viscere, and co-host of the comics podcast Thick Lines with Sally Madden. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Syracuse University and received the first Emerging Artist award at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus in 2015. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Noah Van Sciver
Noah Van Sciver is a multiple award-winning cartoonist who first came to comic readers’ attention with his Eisner-nominated comic book series Blammo. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, The Believer, the Best American Comics, as well as countless graphic anthologies. Van Sciver was a regular contributor to MAD Magazine and has written and drawn numerous bestselling graphic novels including One Dirty Tree, the Fante Bukowski: Struggling Writer series for Fantagraphics books and Joseph Smith And The Mormons for Abrams in 2022. In 2015 he was the Artist in Residence/fellow at the Center For Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.