Since 2011, the Short Run Comix Festival has celebrated the “medium of comics as a coalescence of art and literature,” featuring not just standard comics but also zines and other self-published and handmade books from around the world. This year, the festival relocates after eight years at the Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion and will take place on November 1 at the Seattle Design Center in the Georgetown neighborhood.
Over 150 artists and exhibitors were selected to participate in the 2025 Short Run Festival, of whom many are of Asian or Asian American heritage, including Christina Lee, Amy Zhao, Boya Sun, Bread Lee, William Chen, Cora Lee, Kelly Wang, Sung yoon Choi, Kyung Na Park, Lark Pien, Wendy Ho, Yoko OK, and Yina Kim.
Space is limited, so the Short Run team manages an application process in which each artist must submit work samples, photos of their books, and information on any new projects that could premiere at the Festival. Co-founder and executive director Kelly Froh loves to showcase both emerging and experienced artists from diverse backgrounds.
“We’re looking for weird, unique stuff we haven’t seen before,” Froh explained. “We’re heavy into self-published work, written and drawn by one artist, often made as a labor of love.”
While comics often lean heavily on images, Froh emphasizes that stories are important too.
“We’re most attracted to books that tell a story as well as being drawn beautifully, or, badly, but in a grungy, exciting way,” she elaborated. “There isn’t a checklist; we just know what we like.”
Indonesian artist Yudha Sandy will show three of his comics: Atom Jardin, about the ups and downs of friendship; Buzzer Factory, a story of people who are loyal not to political ideas, but to whomever pays them the most; and Bersama Reymond, an interactive story about the Raymond family in which readers can choose their own path.
Sandy has been telling stories in comic book form since elementary school, and is excited to connect with other artists.
“Festivals like this are important to build networks, create dialogue, exchange ideas, learn about different cultures, find inspiration, and of course, make new friends,” he said.
Another participating artist is Rumi Hara, who is presenting a new minicomic called Night Island, a short story about ghostly desires, remembering, and forgetting. Hara reports that her story was inspired by Shino Kuraishi’s Kotoron, a collection of critical writing on landscape photography recently published in Japan.
Translating Kotoron as the “Theories of Remote Islands,” Hara was interested in Kuraishi’s contention that any place or person can become a “remote island” when they are oppressed and forgotten by the mainstream.
“I was moved by his passion for analyzing and writing about photographic works of specific places, to remember their marginalized history,” said Hara, who was born in Japan but now based in the United States.
“My favorite part of making Night Island was writing the text in the form of a sonnet and having it translated into Japanese by Keijiro Suga, my friend and one of the most influential poets working in contemporary Japanese.”
A third artist selected for Short Run is Rod R. Driver, a Pacific Northwest-based queer artist who will present Komik-Komik Sama-Sama, a comic about Indonesian art organizing, for which the research was done during Driver’s post-graduate research fellowship several years ago. Driver will also share some more recent diary comics, which are autobiographical comic strips created to chronicle events, thoughts, and feelings from the cartoonist’s life in a comic medium combining images along with words typical of a diary or journal.
Driver says that drawing has always been an important form of self-expression when his verbal or written abilities didn’t suffice, and that he began drawing in little booklets that his parents created for him.
“They were about the size of a singlesheet zine, or one-eighth of a piece of letter paper,” Driver described. “They’d staple them for me, and then I could draw a little picture book and my mom would write the words for me.”
Beyond sharing comics and seeing the work of other artists, Driver notes that the Festival fosters international connections.
“The biggest reward has been deepening our relationships as artists and thinking of more opportunities to collaborate,” he said.
Driver partnered with other Short Run guests to contribute art to a special display at Yogyakarta Komik Weeks, a comics festival in Indonesia that originated in 2014 and was held on October 2 and 3 of this year.
“It’s a really virtuous cycle,” Driver added.
That cycle has been interrupted here in the U.S., though, due to immigration issues. Indonesian artist Danang Catur, who had planned to exhibit his latest zine containing a collection of his posters about everyday experiences, digital culture, and social criticism, was denied a visa to travel from Indonesia for the Short Run Festival. Likewise, Pixin Weng (who goes by Pix) had intended to share her latest comic book Wake Up, Pixoto!, published by Drawn & Quarterly, which tells the story of how she got tangled up in an art-based cult-like group led by her former art teacher, but she too was notified that her visa was denied.
Despite these obstacles, Catur and Pixin say they won’t let their creative work be hampered.
“I plan to continue developing a longer-term art project I’ve been working on with my community, Mulyakarya,” said Catur, who also helps organize Yogyakarta Komik Weeks. “We’ve created several comic workshops for high school students, and created comic and cartoon classes for children.”
Pixin also plans to forge ahead, focusing on a project that could even be considered a response to her exclusion from traveling to the U.S.
“I’m currently working on a comic book project that captures my ruminations on love, and in particular, the acts of rupture and repair,” she said. “It features two pink-colored bugs who love and care for each other, while also disagreeing or arguing to be heard or seen.”
Pixin finds that the act of drawing offers her solace and a space of quiet and non-judgment.
More locally, the Short Run Festival itself faces challenges typical of many small arts organizations.
“We’ve been very lucky to receive local and state grants, family foundation grants, and have a lot of long-standing community support, but we still might be one of Seattle’s smallest non-profits,” Froh said.
Regardless, the lean staff and team of volunteers work to make the event fun for their 4,000 attendees each year, and to inspire the comic artists who apply to participate. Froh hopes that comic collectors, casual hobbyists, emerging artists, and experienced mentors will all coalesce to help create the future of this art form.
“Many artists have told us that the date of Short Run is their necessary, rigid deadline to make new work,” Froh enthused. “It’s more important than ever for artists to come out, be seen, and interact with their audience face-to-face.”
Short Run Comix Festival takes place on November 1 at Seattle Design Center, 5701 Sixth Avenue S, Seattle.
