WE SHALL FIGHT UNTIL WE WIN - THE CREATORS

Sabeena Akhtar

Sabeena is a writer and editor. In 2016 she was commissioned to curate an online library of writers of colour for advocacy organisation, Media Diversified. She is also the Festival Coordinator of Bare Lit, the U.K’s principal festival celebrating remarkable writers in the diaspora. In 2017 she partook in the BBC’s coverage of the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and alongside her daughter, filmed a programme on the Partition of India for children. She is the editor of upcoming Anthology, Cut From The Same Cloth, published by Unbound and is currently working on her first novel.

Teamed with Erin Aniker.

Erin Aniker

Erin is a freelance illustrator based in East London., whose work is heavily influenced by the mixed female community she grew up with and my dual Turkish and English heritage. She also co-curates We Are Here: British BME Women which is a platform for British, Black and Minority Ethnic Women to explore their dual nationalities through panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions.

Teamed with Sabeena Akhtar.

Siana Bangura

Siana Bangura is a writer, performer, producer, and content creator from South London. She is the founder of Black British Feminist platform No Fly on the WALL and a publisher at Haus of Liberated Reading. 

Siana is the author of ‘Elephant’, a meditation on Black British womanhood, and is the producer of upcoming documentary film, ‘1500 & Counting’. Her work can be found in mainstream and alternative platforms, including VICE, Dazed, Consented, Black Ballad, and the Green European Journal.

www.sianabangura.com / @sianaarrgh

Teamed with Letty Wilson.

Hannah Berry

Hannah Berry is an award winning graphic novelist and comics creator, author of the political satire LIVESTOCK (2017), creeping horror ADAMTINE (2012) and offbeat noir BRITTEN & BRÜLIGHTLY (2008), all published by Jonathan Cape.

She drew a weekly cartoon strip for the NEW STATESMAN and has contributed to numerous comics publications around the world, including commemorative projects for First Second, Casterman, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and 2000AD.

Jenny Bloomfield

Jenny Bloomfield is a writer of graphic fiction and prose. She is currently studying for an MA in creative writing at Edinburgh Napier University.

Teamed with Grace Wilson.

Kathryn Briggs

Kathryn Briggs is an American graphic novelist who moved to Scotland in 2012 to study her Masters and loved it too much to leave. 

She is an artist as well as a writer; her comics range from slice of life to comparative mythology. 

When not making comics she works as an art educator and buys too many books.

Hari Conner

Hari Conner is an award-winning comics artist and illustrator. Hari has been making comics for more than ten years, and their illustrations have been exhibited and featured in publications across the UK and US.Bio to come. 

Teamed with Durre Shahwar.

Fionnuala Doran

Fionnuala Doran is an Irish artists, working between England and Scotland. She is senior lecturer at Teesside University's BA in Comics, Graphic Novels and Sequential Art. She came down with a bad case of comic-fever in 1990 and has never recovered.

Kirsty Hunter

Kirsty Hunter is an illustrator, graphic designer and co-founder of She Reads Comics. She has a literature background, with a masters in Publishing from Edinburgh Napier University, and acts as an editor for BHP. Kirsty is also the designer of the cover of We Shall Fight Until We Win.

Teamed with Heather Palmer.

Laura Jones

Laura Jones is one half of the award-winning indie publisher 404 Ink. She is a freelancer, and is on the Board of crime writing festival Bloody Scotland. She was jointly awarded the Saltire Society Emerging Publisher of the Year Award 2017.

Teamed with Jem Milton.

Wei Ming Kam

Wei Ming Kam has written for the best selling essay collection The Good Immigrant, Media Diversified and Gal Dem.

She works in publishing and is the co-founder of BAME In Publishing, a network for people of colour who work in publishing, and Pride in Publishing, a network for queer people who work in publishing.

Teamed with Shazleen Khan.

Shazleen Khan

Shazleen Khan is a London based Illustrator and comic maker. She has been a part of the UK small press scene since 2011 and blends both digital and traditional mediums together in her work.

In particular, she enjoys discussing topics such as race, gender and LGTBQ politics in her narrative work.

www.shazleenkhan.com / @NeonLanterns

Teamed with Wei Ming Kam.

Charlot Kristensen

Charlot is an Afro-Dane Illustrator currently based in Dublin. She graduated with an Illustration degree from MDX University, London, in 2015, and is currently pursuing a professional career in her field of study.

Having a black mum and coming from a mixed family, Charlot believes that representation is important to our development. Her art often represents women of colour in hope of empowering them and changing their narrative. The main focus of her work is comics, editorial and book illustration.

Teamed with Nicola Love.

Nicola Love

Nicola Love is a writer, journalist and occasional editor. Her work has appeared in the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, The Herald and STV. She ignores any email that opens with “dear sir”. @Nicola_Love

Teamed with Charlot Kristensen.

Jem Milton

After studying Performance Design at Central St Martin's, Jem worked in London as a graphic facilitator with Scriberia ltd , before moving to Glasgow to pursue a freelance career as a comic artist and illustrator. They have also made various short comics for small press groups such as One Beat Zines and Comic Book Slumber Party. Their ongoing project is a webcomic called The Flying Ship.

Teamed with Laura Jones.

Denise Mina

After a peripatetic childhood in Glasgow, Paris, London, Invergordon, Bergen and Perth, Denise Mina left school early, working in a number of dead end jobs, all of them badly, before studying at night school to get into Glasgow University Law School. Her first novel, Garnethill, published in 1998, winning Crime Writers Association John Creasy Dagger for Best First Crime Novel. She has now published 12 novels and also writes short stories, plays and graphic novels. In 2014 she was inducted into the Crime Writers’ Association Hall of Fame. She regularly appears at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, leads masterclasses on writing and was a judge for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction 2014.

Teamed with Maria Stoian.

Heather Palmer

Heather Palmer is a writer who lives, works and lunches in Glasgow. She is the co-creator of the SICBA shortlisted comic series Grave Wax and writes with a focus on nationalism, death and folklore. She works in comics publishing; marketing, editing and planning events such as Edinburgh Comic Art Festival. @_HeatherAPalmer

Teamed with Rebecca Horner for and Kirsty Hunter.

Durre Shahwar

Durre Shahwar is a writer, an Associate Editor for Wales Arts Review, and a Word Factory Apprentice 2017. She is the co-founder of ‘Where I’m Coming From’, an open mic that promotes BAME writing in Wales. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction about a broad range of topics, including race, identity, gender and mental health.

Durre's work has been published in various magazines and anthologies including Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class (2017, Dead Ink Books), The Lonely Crowd, Sister-hood Magazine and The Stockholm Review of Literature. 

Teamed with Hari Conner.

Maria Stoian

Maria is a freelance illustrator currently living in Scotland. She likes to use riso and Photoshop and she thinks InDesign is a gift from the gods. She's also working as a designer with the cool cats at Hillside Agency. Her comics have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nib, Dirty Rotten Comics, The Dangerous Women Project and Counterpoint.

@maria_draws

Teamed with Denise Mina.

Grace Wilson

Grace Wilson studied Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins in London, and later completed her MFA in Storytelling at Konstfack College of Art & Design in Stockholm. She is a ceramicist, comic artist and illustrator, currently based in Edinburgh. Her debut graphic novel Saving Grace, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2016, and is a darkly humorous commentary on the housing crisis in contemporary London.

She regularly contributes to a variety of international zines and anthologies, does editorial illustration for the likes of Broadly and Strike! Magazine, and exhibits her ceramic figurines.

Teamed with Jenny Bloomfield.

Letty Wilson

Letty Wilson is a Scottish comics artist and writer. She won the 2016 graphic Shakespeare award for Park Witches, and the 2017 SICBA for graphic novel A Stranger Came to Town. You can find details of her work at behance.net/lettydraws.

Teamed with Siana Bangura.