If you missed our recent Town Hall, I want to share what we covered—what we accomplished together this year, what’s coming in 2026, and some lessons we’ve learned along the way.
What Happened in 2025
We started the year with KCU Pitchfest 2025, and I’m so happy to share some good news about it: several of our winners got literary agents and are on their way to book deals!
- Sarah Thomas and Tzook Har Paz (who designed our first-ever Pitchfest poster for 2026) signed with Alice Sutherland-Hawes of Ash Literary
- Maria Goltseva signed with Jen Azantian of Azantian Literary
- Ally Frame signed with Jessica Saint Jean at Root Literary
There might be others I don’t know about yet (if you were a Pitchfest participant and have good news to share, please post in the comments!).
In April, we launched our first-ever Kickstarter, for our first-ever KCU anthology, Let’s Go!.
The anthology included 22 stories by 31 different contributors, and a total of 34 people from our Studio program worked on the project. We divided into 4 teams to produce the book: a publication team, editorial team, marketing team, and design team. It took us a year and 10 months to bring it to life. Yes, it was like herding cats, but we did it. 😉
Our Kickstarter was a big success — we were funded overnight and almost tripled our goal—which was very, very exciting. As of this fall, we’ve shipped Let’s Go to our Kickstarter backers. It’s also available on Amazon now (hopefully on Bookshop.org soon). If you got a copy and want to leave us a review, that would be amazing!
In June, the KCU team—me, Bailey, Lisa, and Jade—had a retreat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The four of us had never been together in person, so staying in an Airbnb for two nights together was such a blast.
It was actually during that retreat, sitting around in the living room and discussing our plans for the fall, that Bailey suggested I teach a course on “how to launch a graphic novel.” As soon as she said it, I was on board with the idea.
Deadlines are great, right? I knew right away that if I say I’m going to teach a course, I will be forced to organize my ideas and put them into a coherent framework. Being forced to organize your ideas is always a good thing. 😉
We ended up with about 40 wonderful students in the course. Here are a few things students said about it:
- “Even if you know what you need to do, this course will get you to do it sooner and with more support, organization and resources!” – Michelle Lin
- “I gained a ton of helpful knowledge and advice. But better yet, I gained new friends to continue this journey together with me.” – Joy Liu
- “[This course] makes marketing seem less like a chore than an opportunity to do what you already like to do — make stuff and tell stories.” – Andy Hirsch
Hooray!!
And finally, throughout the year in our Studio program, we had amazing guests come talk to us: Chris Duffy, Kazu Kibuishi, Colleen Venable, James Powell, Joe Latham, John Hendrix, Britt Siess, Robyn Chapman, Mika Song, César Lador, and so many others. It was a jam-packed year, and I’m grateful to everyone who shared their time and expertise with us.
Celebrating Our Community
Before we dive into what’s next, I want to give some shoutouts. We’ve never done member awards before, but this felt like the right time to start.
Member of the Year goes to Roger McMullen. Roger is always in the community answering people’s questions, sharing great resources and articles, and offering his own perspective. I always read Roger’s comments because he has such interesting things to say. He’s also the founder of our Zine Club group, and converted many of us (including me!) into zine fanatics.
The Put Yourself Out There Award goes to Bob Thibeault, who tried some really new things this year. After being a part of the Let’s Go! anthology, he did his first solo Kickstarter campaign, and he’s been a role model for all of us in terms of stepping outside your comfort zone.
The Quiet Hero Award goes to Teresa Robeson. Even though she’s a self-proclaimed “shy human,” she is always welcoming new members and cheering people on. Plus, Teresa can raise chickens and can food and survive on the land—when the zombie apocalypse happens, Teresa is the KCU member we’ll turn to.
At our June retreat, I recognized the KCU team with awards, too, but I want to share them publicly now with everyone.
The Quiet Hero 2 Award goes to Lisa Lowry, who helps us stay true to our values and works behind the scenes to make sure all the little details get done. If it weren’t for Lisa, everything would fall apart.
The North Star Award goes to Jade Vaughan, whose artistry, soulfulness, and sense of humor is a beacon of light to me and I hope to many of you.
And the Kicking Butt Award goes to Bailey Culver, who brought 1000% more energy and enthusiasm to our team and completely transformed our social media presence.
I also want to give a shoutout to every single person who’s contributed to our community — we would not be where we are today without you.
What’s Coming in 2026
Now let’s talk about what we have planned for next year. It’s going to rock, guys.
KCU Pitchfest is coming back! Submissions will open from February 12th to February 23rd. We have about 13 judges confirmed so far, and we’ll announce the full jury in the second half of January. Many of the agents and editors on our jury will be offering one-on-one pitch review sessions again. The Pitchfest celebration event, announcement of winners, and one-on-one pitch reviews will be on April 25th, 2026. Mark your calendar with those dates!
We’re going to table at conventions. We’re upping our game and getting out into the community, not only to share what KCU does, but also to sell the Let’s Go! anthology. We’ve been accepted for MoCCA already — hooray! I’m also going to the Bologna Book Fair, where I’ll be representing both my agency and KCU. We’re thinking about exhibiting at ALA in June and SPX in September. Whatever shows we end up at, we’ll be inviting KCU members to come visit us, and if you were a Let’s Go! contributor and want to be at our booth for an hour or so, we’ll have signup sheets.
During the summer, we’re going to offer a graphic novel bootcamp. We don’t have all the details finalized yet, but it will likely be a 3-month course with a finished product that comes out of it. We’re working hard behind the scenes to pull it together. I am very excited about it, and can’t wait to share more details soon.
In the fall, I’m teaching How to Launch Your Graphic Novel again. Everyone who was a student this year—thank you for being my guinea pigs! I absolutely loved teaching this course and can’t wait to meet a new cohort of students next year.
We’ll continue offering occasional live online events. Bailey and Alondra are continuing the co-working sessions on Mondays, and we might start another co-working session at a different time. We’ll definitely be doing socials and meetups, both online and in person at conventions. Feedback with a Pro was very popular, and we’ll bring that back—it’ll be free for anyone to attend, but if you want to have your work critiqued by the guest agent or editor, you’ll pay for that critique. We’ll sprinkle some workshops and masterclasses throughout the year, so stay tuned.
An Important Change: Studio on Hiatus
We’re putting the Studio program on hiatus for 2026. Subscription fees have been challenging for a lot of people, and we want to make KCU sustainable both for us as a team and for you within the community. We’re working on figuring out how to make it better for all of us.
The workshop & interview replay archive for Studio members is not going away. If you’re currently a paying Studio member, you’ll still have access to it after we close it at the end of December. And many of the types of events we did in Studio will be offered again for KCU members—some free and some paid.
We’d Love to Get Your Support
Starting in January, we’re moving to a “pay-as-you-wish” model for the KCU community.
As part of that, we’ll be offering the opportunity to be placed in a curated critique group again. If you’re looking for a small group of other writers or artists who are working on graphic novels aimed at kids or teens, this will be your time. We’ll open the form in January—look for it in the feed and our newsletter—and I’ll personally curate the groups, which will be between three and five people.
We’ll also be offering private consultations—one-on-one sessions with me or a handful of other industry pros who work in graphic novel publishing.
And… we may have some merch on the way! Wink, wink!
Stay tuned for more announcements about all of this in early January 2026.
Lessons We’ve Learned
I want to share some lessons that have brought KCU to where we are right now.
First, focus on one major project at a time. Trying to do too many things at once is a recipe for burnout. We’ve experienced burnout, and I’m sure everybody in this community has. It’s really tough for creative people to avoid—we tend to love ideas and get very enthusiastic about all the cool things we want to do. I personally struggle with this A LOT. I’m really trying hard to limit what we’re doing so we can do it really well. That’s our goal, and you can help us stay accountable, because it’s a tough one.
Second, you learn best by doing. Talks and demos are great, and I almost always enjoy them. But what I’ve learned is that if you practice something together with others, it SUPERCHARGES your progress. That’s why the courses we offer are always cohort-based, meaning that students are matched into small groups where they can get to know each other well.
Finally, community, collaboration, and friendship don’t “just happen”—they have to be facilitated. This has become the raison d’être behind Kids Comics Unite. But we’re still learning how to do it effectively. I’m definitely a student of “how to build community,” and feel I have a long way to go in terms of learning how to make it happen in the best way. We want to be intentional about it, and that’s one of our goals for next year.
The Bottom Line
Getting good at making comics is not easy. Understanding publishing as an industry is not easy. And building an audience is not easy.
Everybody in KCU is in the same boat together—what we’re all trying to do is freakin’ hard!!
I can’t promise that Kids Comics Unite can make it easy. But what we CAN do is make it easier.
I want to leave you with a quote from Lynda Barry that I shared at our Town Hall, because I think it speaks to all of us:
More than anything, what the world needs right now is more human connection.
So when you’re putting your comics out into the world, you’re doing something incredibly important.
Let’s make and share more comics in 2026!
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