Elgin, Katherine "Jill" (1923-2005)
American comic book artist
drew the World War II comic Girl Commandos between 1942 and 1945. She had taken the art on this comic over from Barbara Hall. She also drew Blonde Bomber and Twinkle Twins stories for Speed. Her work also appeared in Champ, Green Hornet, and Wild Bill Hickok.
She also drew the Golden Age Black Cat, Harvey Comics's most popular female superhero.
Ellis, Grace
American journalist, comics, and television writer
Ellis won the Eisner Award for Best New Series and Best Publication for Teens in 2015 for Lumberjanes and Best Reality-Based Work in 2023 for Flung Out of Space and was nominated for Best Writer.
After college, Ellis worked for Autostraddle where, during an annual sleepaway camp the site hosted, she met Shannon Watters, who was a writer and editor at Boom! Studios. Watters recommended that they make a comic together and they came up with the idea for Lumberjanes. The first issue of Lumberjanes was the first comic Ellis had ever written. Lumberjanes would go on to win the 2016 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic and to be nominated several more times.
In 2017, she began working on Moonstruck, a romantic comedy set in a world with mythological creatures, alongside artists Shae Beagle and Kate Leth. The comic started as a class project in the Columbus College of Art & Design, where the professor, Laurenn McCubbin, assigned student artists to work with professional writers. After Shae was placed with Ellis, McCubbin liked their story so much, she helped pitch it to Image Comics. It was listed by Entertainment Weekly as one of "10 LGBTQ comics to read this Pride Month".
In 2022, her first graphic novel, Flung Out of Space, was published by Abrams Books' new imprint Surley Books, a graphic novel line dedicated to queer creators and curated by Mariko Tamaki. With artist Hannah Templer, the comic looks at the life of Patricia Highsmith and her struggles as a "self-loathing lesbian" writer in the 1940s.
To learn more about Grace Ellis and her career, please follow the link https://www.ohheygraceellis.com/ to her official website.
Ewing, Dr. Eve Louise (1986 - )
American writer, scholar, sociologist and cultural organizer
Dr. Ewing is the bestselling author of the books Original Sins, Electric Arches, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, 1919, and Maya and the Robot. She writes comic books, including Exceptional X-Men and Ironheart and Black Panther. And TV, and theater, and a lot of other things as well.
Eve is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago.
Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919. Additionally, Ewing is the author of the Ironheart comic book series for Marvel centered on the young heroine Riri Williams.
Dr. Ewing is also a cultural organizer, which means she works collectively with other people to build and nurture creative communities, and strive for social transformation through artistic and cultural practices.
To learn more information about Dr. Ewing and her professional career, please follow this link https://eveewing.com/ to her own website.
