07/28/2026
Drumroll, please... we're excited to announce the SLICE 2026 Special Guests—Nicole Goux, WildStar Press, and Crystal Odelle! Our guests will be participating in a panel discussion on opening night, Oct. 30, and will be giving individual presentations on expo day, Oct. 31. We can’t wait for you to meet them!
Nicole Goux (she/her) is an Eisner Award–nominated illustrator and cartoonist from Los Angeles. She’s the artist of DC’s Shadow of the Batgirl and co-creator of F*ck Off Squad at Silver Sprocket Bicycle Club and Forest Hills Bootleg Society at Simon and Schuster: Atheneum. She has been published by DC, Dark Horse, IDW, Oni, and Avery Hill. Her most recent comic, This Place Kills Me in collaboration with Mariko Tamaki, is published by Abrams Fanfare. Her most recent book, Punk’n Heads with co-creator Dave Baker, arrived in shops April 2026 from Top Shelf Publishing.
Founded in 2019, Akira B. created this indie publishing company to uplift the voices of diverse creatives. Their personal goal was and still is to spread stories across the globe, sharing a message that’s not only positive but relatable to the minority in an effort to push that representation does in fact matter. WildStar Press is a small but growing press here to keep the fun in the creative process of building these stories and showing the importance of quality triumphing over quantity. |
Author of Trans Studies, Crystal Odelle (they/she) is a storyteller of trans/polyamorous/whore practice, writing and revising into the desire for something like a life. Their stories have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Foglifter, Split Lip Magazine, smoke and mold, Apogee, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Lambda Literary fellow and McCormack Writing Center Scholar, nominated for Best of the Net, and anthologized in We’re Here: The Best Q***r Speculative Fiction. She writes RPGs at Feverdream Games and serves as an organizer at Changeling Q***r Series and as a hybrid reader at Abode Press. Her writing and performances trouble the divide between fiction and reality toward liberation.
🎨 and 🎥 by @
