COMPETITIONS/NEXT MANGA: I'm pausing my work on "Sunset Protocol" to submit to a new manga competition (59 pages), and I'm halfway through. This is the hardest part of the job, but I'm on schedule. Still stuck on the last 10 pages (of 40) left to do on Chapter 2 (of 12) of "Sunset Protocol", the supernatural mystery-thriller and quasi-sequel to "The Dreaming", but I've temporarily paused this for a manga contest entry due in July. I'm close to finishing posting Chapter 1 on Instagram and my other social media, and after that I'm going to cut back o this for work.
AWARDS: In April, I won the Spirit of Zelda Award, from the Zelda Awards, which celebrates women in comics. It's in the category of +10 years in the biz, so thank you to everyone who voted for me! Congratulations to all the winners too! Watch the ceremony on Youtube. Meanwhile, "The Dreaming" v1-2 has also been listed on the NSW Premier Reading Challenge list! These lists are screened and once you get on, you don't go off, so hopefully I use get onto the reading lists of other states too.
INTERVIEW: Australian Comics History website FOLIO has an 8-part interview with me, talking about the history of the Manga fandom in Australia.
The Jan2022 issue of School Magazine contains so of my favourite artwork that I’ve done for the magazine so far. It’s the story of the “Three Brujas”.
Here’s some artwork from the “Frog Viking”, a story that 10 year-old me would have absolutely loved. As an adult, I still like it a lot, and it was fun to illustrate too.
I want to let you know about a short comics-prose essay I wrote, called “Manga Fandom in Australia”. Click on the link to read it!
Page 1 of “Manga Fandom in Australia” Page 2 of “Manga Fandom in Australia”
My essay, which was specifically written in comics-prose format (rather than comics format), is meant to be about the rather the under-documented Australian manga fandom. Why is it under-documented? The essay will explain why–at the end of the day, this country still maintains a fair amount of xenophobia towards Japanese-style pop culture.
This essay is part of a new government-funded Australian Comics academic project called FOLIO, which is spearheaded a group of Comics Studies academics at University of Melbourne, RMIT & UTS. This multi-year project aims to chart the contemporary Australian comics scene, and I hope to incorporate Australian game-comics like “Framed” and “Florence” into it as well in the next few years, which I am currently researching for my PhD.
Finally got around to posting my string of illustrations for The School Magazine! This is from the October 2021 and November 2021 issues, and these are not the only illustrations for them. It was great doing illustrations for some of these totally awesome stories.
In my third collaboration with Kookie Magazine, a magazine for girls aged 7-12+, I teamed up with aboriginal writer Gayle Kennedy to create a story about three young aboriginal girls. Main character Rosie, who has spina bifida and thus needs a wheelchair, and her cousins Daisy and Lily live a normal and active life, until something happens that has them fight for respect and their rights.