Jaume Copons

Author of a solid literary work aimed at young people. He has written novels, short stories, songs and scripts for television. His experience as a scriptwriter on Sesame Street at the end of the 20th century was decisive in directing his work towards children, and in becoming aware of the fact that he was addressing readers in their formative years.
Copons is a narrator of clever, imaginative and close stories who, with a fresh and direct style, connects naturally with his readers, without avoiding complex themes or intelligent humour. For ten years, he has formed a creative team with Liliana Fortuny, with whom he has created the series Agus y los monstruos and Bitmax&Co.

Other activities involving the participant:

Monster Workshop

Liliana Fortuny

A leading illustrator and creator in the field of children's and young adult literature, she has developed a unique style that has been enriched by her experiences in other artistic fields (designing album covers, creating music videos, animating series, etc.).
Her work as co-author of the successful series Agus y los monstruos and Bitmax&Co, together with Jaume Copons, has been acclaimed for the expressiveness, dynamism and carefully studied simplicity of her illustrations, which provide content and enhance the imagination, capturing the attention of all audiences.

Other activities involving the participant:

Monster Workshop

Nicole Wu

Creator Partnerships

@bart_rosalesd

Movie detective, pizza lover, and riddle master.
Bart Rosales is a content creator who has gained popularity on TikTok thanks to his fun and creative videos.

His content offers analysis, reviews, and recommendations of movies and series, along with commentary, trivia, and riddles that will make you think beyond the everyday.

His style focuses on entertainment and authenticity, with a touch of humor that resonates with his audience.

@boxtvproject

Content creator passionate about telling stories in all their forms, from the most epic to the most subtle. At @boxtvproject, I analyze series, movies, and soundtracks, exploring the details that make each one unique. I like comics, pop culture, and anime. I'm always looking for new narratives to imagine and tell.

@jesuselgeek

Comic book collector. Lover and fan of Geek culture literature and movies. JesusElGeek is a content creator about comics, movies and video games.

His greatest passion is being able to immerse himself in incredible stories and being able to narrate the events of comic book vignettes in a unique and fun way.

He creates reviews about movies and video games that have left their mark on him and of course talks about many curious facts that encompass these topics.

On his channel you will find reviews, narrations, unboxings, comparisons and much more.

Saku

A graduate in Literature originally from the state of Campeche, she has worked as an illustrator, graphic narrator, academic and has been the winner of several awards such as the PACMYC program in 2017 and the PECDA scholarship from her state in 2012, and in 2022 for her comic projects “No tan Dulce” and “Arjen Power” respectively. She was a resident of the 1st generation of artists at “La Casa del Autor” Zapopan, Jal. during 2022 with the graphic novel “Algunos”;

With a great passion for graphic narrative, she currently works as a higher education teacher in the state of Jalisco and at the same time has continued her artistic production, self-publishing her comics and illustrations on social networks and self-managed alternative spaces.

Damián García

Cartoonist, entrepreneur, designer and teacher.

He is the Co-Founder and current Director of Familia Usaka, a Spanish-speaking independent comic book publisher. This project was presented on Shark Tank Mexico, the first one focused on national comics in the history of the program.

He is the author of the comic “Carnaval”. He started in 2008 and finished in 2019, and was selected nationally to participate in the 9th International Manga Award 2015 in Japan. He leads the top #2 in sales at Editorial Usaka. He is also the author of the comic “#FileSeUnHeroe”, which was one of the 10 finalists in SecuenciArte 2016 by Pixelalt in Cuernavaca. He is preparing the launches of new series: “Amarres en Línea”, “HabitaDos” and “Amarillo Esquite”.

He graduated from the Bachelor of Advertising Design and Production at UPAEP. He has worked in the area of ​​audiovisual production, graphic design and as a cartoonist. He has participated as an exhibitor in more than 65 different comic book expos, book fairs and animation festivals in 23 states of the country as well as Spain, Colombia, Japan and the United States.

He teaches Production and Animation at the Universidad Latinoamericana in Mexico City.

Lara Yokoshima

She is a digital artist and comic book author from Veracruz. Her specialty is the creation of comics and illustrations focused on the Boys Love (yaoi) genre. Her first published and completed work under the Familia Usaka label in Mexico was the BL comic "Tango", which is also published in the U.S. (Yaoi Revolution) and Germany (Fireangels Verlag). She currently does commissioned illustrations and is working on new stories.

A. Yépiz

She is a comic and storyboard artist from Ensenada born in 1996. She studied Fine Arts at the Autonomous University of Baja California and the University of the Valley of Atemajac. For a couple of years she worked as a storyboard and concept art artist in the animation industry in Mexico.
In 2016, she created the mystery and comedy webcomic “Mystery Time Escape” together with Sergio Zamora Ramos. In 2022, she was nominated in the Secuenciarte comic contest with the title “Piloto espacio”. In that same year, A. Yépiz was selected in the second generation of artists at the Casa del Autor Zapopan, where she developed her watercolor comic called “Altamar”.
A. Yépiz has self-published her comics “Mystery Time Escape: Crisis aparatoméstica“, “El día que dejé dedibuja“, “Mystery Time Escape: El viaje extracurricular urbano“ and “Algo sobre Myrna”. She is currently publishing a comedy-romance graphic novel with Familia Usaka publishing called “Paranoia Crush.”
Her work has been presented in Guadalajara and San Diego at the exhibitions “Narrativas Emergentes” and “Border Blitz” respectively.

Marco Antonio Aramburo Martínez

He comes from a small town in the state of Sinaloa called “La Cruz, Elota” and when he turned 18, he moved to Guadalajara to study “Animation and Digital Art” at the “Tecnológico de Monterrey” university, where he made a Stop Motion short film called “Paperboard” that participated in several university film festivals.
During his time at university, he did internships in different animation and video game studios, which helped him to work in the career field, in 2D animation projects such as animated series, as well as working in advertising for mobile games.
In 2023, he finished studying a master's degree focused on Graphic Narrative at the AVE study center. He currently works as a university-level Animation Professor, Freelance Animator and Comic Book Artist for the Usaka Family, as well as working on his personal projects on social media.

Luis Safah

His work includes illustration, painting, graphic narrative, drawing and video, disciplines in which he has stood out over the last decade.
Through his work, he has been awarded various national and international prizes. Different exhibitions and publications stand out in his professional career in editorial and video projects. He was awarded the Fonca 2014 prize with his novel Esperando a los Bárbaros, published through the Co-editions program in 2016 with Oink Ediciones. He has presented murals and graphic projects in places such as Sweden, Los Angeles, New Orleans, the Somali embassy in Sweden and Spain. His books have been housed in the Printed Matter New York collection, among other internationally recognized libraries and universities. Dedicated to his artistic work and the publication of his work, as well as his freelance relationship for various projects of which he is part as a collaborator. Illustrator and art director around various independent projects.

Sareki

Throughout her career, she has been a special guest at more than twenty book fairs, including the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) and the International Children's and Youth Book Fair (FILIJ). She has taught graphic narrative workshops in both private schools and government institutions, sharing her experience and promoting graphic art. Thanks to her dedication, she has the sponsorship of recognized brands in the artistic field such as Pentel, XP-Pen, Prismacolor and Faber Castell.

She has represented Mexico at two important international events in Japan: the Japan Media Arts Festival (JMAF) and the XI International Manga Competition. In addition, she has been a special guest at the Comic Con in Costa Rica and at the Costa Rica Book Fair in 2022 and 2023. Currently, six of her works have international distribution in countries such as Argentina, Spain, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico, in collaboration with the Mexican publishing house TRILLAS.

She has also represented Mexico at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the most important publishing event in the world. She was also invited as an illustrator to the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN)'s annual "Robot War" event and to the 2023 Panama International Book Fair. Finally, she was honored as a special guest in the manga section of the prestigious Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême in France, the most important graphic narrative festival worldwide.

Other activities involving the participant:

Presentation of new titles: The Legend of the First Tlaxcalli and The Legend of the Jade bird

Claudia Stern

Historian, researcher and professor, she holds an MA in Cultural Studies from The Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies and a PhD in history from the Zvi Yavetz Graduate School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University. She is a research associate at CEIHVAL and a professor at MEUVAL at FADU-UBA. She has completed postdoctoral stays as an EDEN fellow at the University of Granada, a Minerva Foundation fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and a CSMCH-IASH fellow at the University of Edinburgh. As a researcher at the Global@Venice – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund (2023-2025), Ca’ Foscari University Venice, her research focuses on graphic humor from intersectionality, memory and trauma in Chile.

Claudia is the author and co-editor of The Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies (Routledge, 2022), a work recently published in two volumes in its Spanish version under the Colección Tierra Libre (Editorial Universidad del Rosario–UAM Cuajimalpa, 2023). Her book Entre el cielo y el suelo: las identidadesásticas de las clases medias (Santiago de Chile, 1932-1962) (RiL editores, 2021), received the AILASA 2022 award for the best monograph of the year.

https://pric.unive.it/projects/conchilmem/home

Nadia Hafid

Invitado de Honor

(Terrassa, 1990) received a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and studied Mural Arts at Escola Llotja. She combines illustration and comics, and her drawings have adorned covers for the Babelia supplement in El País, as well as for articles in international media such as The New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, Berliner Zeitung, The Washington Post, and others.

El buen padre (2020), her debut with Sapristi, took the prize for best new author of the Asociación de Críticos de Cómic, and she was included in the list of the 100 best national illustrators by Rockdeluxe, and featured in the compilation of best illustrators in Jot Down magazine. She was also nominated at the Salón del Cómic in the category of best new work in 2021.

Her work has been translated into French by Casterman press, and to Turkish by the publisher Beta Basim Yayin Dagitim.

Chacales is her second comic book (2022) published by Sapristi. It received the award El Ojo Crítico 2022 in the comic book category and it was nominated for best work at the 41st Salón del Cómic. She won the Sento Llobell 2023 young talent award.

She was featured in the Constelación gráfica exhibition at the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture-CCCB (2022-2023) dedicated to experimental and cutting-edge comics.

She teaches editorial illustration for the Master's in Cartoon and Illustration at the Elisava School (Faculty of Design and Engineering of Barcelona).

She has been a jury member for the Ficomic Cartoon Grant and for the Young Creation INJUVE Grants.

Instagram: @nadihaf

www.nadiahafid.com

Other activities involving the participant:

Onliterature in other formats. Writing and drawing-illustrating life itself
Panel: Access to Information for Equity and Diversity

Edgar David Aguilera Olguín

Author and voice artist. Creative supervisor of Súper Héroe, exclusive licensee of Kalimán, Mexico’s first superhero. Co-author: “Profanadores de tumbas” (novel and audio-comic), “El Origen de Kalimán, el legado de Kali” (comic and audio-comic), “El despertar de Kalimán” (comic and audio-comic) and “El valle de los vampiros 2023” (audio-comic). Voice-over artist, producer, creative. 2021 National Voice-over Award, National Association of Voice-Over Artists of Mexico.