Meet our staff and faculty
All our staff and teachers are working cartoonists, illustrators, or artists dedicated to helping students tell their stories.
Our Admin team
Tom Hart, Executive Director and Head Instructor
Tom Hart is the New York Times Bestselling author of Rosalie Lightning and the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in the Comics Journal and other comix publications. Tom has been called “one of the great underrated cartoonists of our time” by Eddie Campbell and “one of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Scott McCloud. Before founding SAW, Tom was a core instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC for 10 years. Tom’s former students include award winning-cartoonists Dash Shaw, Sarah Glidden, Box Brown, Leslie Stein, and many others.
Tom teaches comics storytelling and practice in the Comics Certificate Program and Graphic Novel Intensive. His online courses include Comics for Writers, Storytelling Flow, Comics Memoir, and Going in for the Snakes, a course about making visceral, powerful comics.
Emma Jensen, Assistant Director and Instructor
Emma Jensen is an Australian comics artist and designer based in Gainesville, Florida. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Masters in Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing. She has worked as a comics educator for various Australian and American organizations, as well as working as an editor and designer for independent and educational publishers in both countries. She publishes and exhibits comics regularly, with her work most recently included in kus #37, Down Down Under, and Ink Brick No 10.
Emma joins SAW as the Assistant Executive Director and an Instructor after coming to Gainesville to attend the year-long intensive program in 2018. She teaches in the Graphic Novel Intensive and Comics Certificate Program, and facilitates in person workshops.
Karlo Antunes, Communications Director and Head Editor
Karlo Antunes (he/him) is a Visual Artist and Editor specializing in Visual Storytelling, Design and Development, and Print. He received a Bachelor of Arts dual major in Film Studies and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Florida in 2017 while simultaneously exploring the world of comix and animation through courses from SAW and SVA.
Karlo has experience in script editing, art/layout design editing, book compositing, and clean-up work for titles such as Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City by Julia Wertz, Nickelodeon’s The Loud House, Nickelodeon’s The Casagrandes, Monica Adventures, The Smurfs, Geronimo Stilton, and more for Papercutz/NBM Graphic Novels. He is also the founder and editor of an off-beat literary-art anthology called Bird Brained Zine Anthology and likes to dabble in woodworking and web design.
You’ll (mainly) find Karlo around SAW’s online comics community prompting conversation, SAW’s social media platforms sharing the latest SAW news, and supporting student anthologies as SAW’s Head Comics Editor.
Our Core Program Instructors
Jess Ruliffson, Senior Instructor
Jess Ruliffson is an award-winning cartoonist who has lectured and taught workshops at The School of Visual Arts, The Drawing Center, and The Center for Cartoon Studies. In 2017, her work was shortlisted for Slate's Cartoonist Studio Prize. Clients include Pantheon Books, BuzzFeed, Freeman's, The Boston Globe, The Gainesville Sun, The Oxford American, and Wilson Quarterly. Her forthcoming graphic novel, Invisible Wounds (Fantagraphics), collects interviews with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Jess currently teaches in the Graphic Novel Intensive, Comics Certificate Program and short courses throughout the year.
Justine Mara Andersen, Senior Instructor
Justine Mara Andersen continues the tradition of comics mentorship after learning from top names in the industry, including luminaries P. Craig Russell (Elric, Sandman), Val Mayerik (Punisher, Conan), Frank Thorne (Red Sonja), and Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Justine has worked as an inker and illustrator for DC Comics, Image Comics, Wizards of the Coast, Lucasfilm, and others. She struck out on her own to create the long-running series Mara, Celtic Shamaness for Fantagraphics.
Justine teaches illustration, drawing, and inking techniques in the Comics Certificate Program.
Elizabeth Trembley, Ph.D, Senior Instructor
Elizabeth Trembley, Ph.D, is the author of the graphic memoir Look Again (Street Noise, 2022), which was shortlisted for the Graphic Medicine International Collective’s Award. She is also a Lambda Literary Award-winning mystery novelist (Whacked, pen name Josie Gordon), and storytelling teacher of more than three decades. She trained in literature, writing, and innovation and creativity in places as diverse as the University of Chicago, Disney University, and SAW. Through her classes, hundreds of students have reflected on their lives through graphic memoir comics, drafted their first novels, and explored personal essays in prose and comics.
For SAW, Beth teaches a twelve-week graphic memoir course, moderates the online Memoir and Medicine Intensive Group, and guest teaches on story, technology, and organizational strategies in the SAW Comics Certificate Program and the Graphic Novel Intensive. She does local comics workshops whenever she can! She also provides private coaching to individuals and small groups.
Sidney Davidson, Instructor
Sidney Davidson is an illustrator based in Gainesville, FL. He has a BFA in Sequential Art and MFA in Illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design. His editorial work has appeared in The Boston Globe, High Country News, and The Iguana. Sidney has rigorously and analytically studied drawing, inking techniques, and composition for 12 years. He has a strategic solution-oriented approach to drawing, illustration, and storytelling challenges.
Sidney teaches analytical drawing techniques in the Comics Certificate Program.
Rob Clough, Instructor
Rob Clough has been a critic, editor, and programming organizer for nearly twenty years in the world of comics. Beginning with Savant, he has written for Cicada, Your Chicken Enemy, Sequart, Foxing Quarterly, Poopsheet Foundation, Looper, The Comics Journal, SOLRAD, Study Group Magazine, and many others. He has been writing his own High-Low blog since 2009.
He was a juror for the Kukoc minicomics award, the Locher Award, and the Eisner Awards. He's been the programming director for the Small Press Expo (SPX) since 2016. He's also done programing for Autopic and Zine Machine and moderated panels at Cartooon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) and CAKE.
Rob has also written extensively about cancer, college basketball and funky music. He lives in Durham, NC with his kiddo and two cats. He teaches Hidden Histories in the Comics Certificate Program.
Ayanni Cooper, Ph.D, Instructor
Ayanni Cooper holds a PhD in English through the University of Florida where she specialized in comics and animation studies. Her research interests include monster theory; gender & sexuality; anime & manda; and science fiction & fantasy. Ayanni also co-hosts the podcast Sex. Love. Literature., which takes a semi-scholarly look at the “sex-stuff” in media matters. She teaches Modern Comics Exploration in the Comics Certificate Program.
Lauren Weinstein, Instructor
Lauren Weinstein is a cartoonist and artist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Bookforum, Nautilus, and The Guardian, among many other outlets. For the past twenty years, her funny, beautiful, and bizarre comics and graphic novels have addressed universal human issues such as mortality, time, and most recently, motherhood. Lauren teaches Finishing Decisions, a course in using different media to make comics, in the Comics Certificate Program.
Hyena Hell, Instructor and Mentor
Hyena Hell is a cartoonist, illustrator and sometimes-printmaker. Her comics have been published by Silver Sprocket, Tinto Press, Birdcage Bottom Books, and her own imprint, Horror Vacui Press.
She joins SAW an instructor in the Graphic Novel Intensive, a mentor in the Comics Certificate Program and short course facilitator.
Our Returning Instructors and Mentors
Leela Corman, Instructor and Mentor
Leela Corman is an illustrator, and award-winning graphic novelist. She self-published three issues of her minicomic, Flimflam, before winning a 1999 Xeric Grant to publish her first graphic novel, Queen’s Day. Her latest graphic novel, Unterzakhn, has been nominated for the L.A. Times Book Award, the Eisner Award, and Le Prix Artemisia. Unterzakhn has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and Italian, and won the Best Anglo-American comic at the Rome Festival. She is a contributor to Nautilus Magazine, The Nib, Tablet Magazine, Symbolia, and The OC Weekly. She has illustrated books on topics that range from urban gardening to the history of the skirt. Her editorial clients include PBS, the New York Times, and BUST Magazine. Leela is represented by Wales Literary Agency.
Leela teaches an annual course in emotional storytelling and mentoring in the Comics Certificate Program.
Derek Ballard, Instructor and Mentor
Derek Ballard is a cartoonist based in Gainesville, Florida. He has been a regular guest artist in SAW's in person programs. In 2021 he joined our in person instructors to teach storyboarding and emotional storytelling. He currently facilitates an ongoing mentoring group that meets regularly to develop person projects.
Matt Madden, Instructor and Mentor
Matt Madden is a cartoonist and translator who has taught in art schools around the world. He known for his playful and inventive comics like the metafictional romp Ex Libris and 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style which led to his initiation into Oubapo, The Workshop for Potential Comics, in 2005.
In 2013 he was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. He has also done translations from the French and Spanish, including Aristophane's The Zabîme Sisters (First Second) and Edmond Baudoin’s Piero (New York Review Comics). He wrote two comics textbooks in collaboration with his wife, Jessica Abel, and the couple were series editors for The Best American Comics from Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt for six years.
From 2012 to 2016, the whole family lived in Angoulême, France, while he and Jessica did residencies at La Maison des Auteurs. They are currently living in Philadelphia, where Matt is working on new comics and offering his services as a comics mentor/coach when he’s not looking after his kids or playing guitar. Matt is a mentor in the Comics Certificate Program and teachers short courses in constraints-driven comics.
Georgia Webber, Instructor
Georgia Webber is a comics artist, editor, and facilitator living in Newfoundland. She is entirely occupied by the intersection of health and art, making music, comics, and facilitating courses from this point of fascination. Georgia is best known for her debut graphic memoir, Dumb: Living Without a Voice (Fantagraphics 2018), the chronicle of her severe vocal injury and sustained vocal condition which causes her pain from using her voice. This difficult experience lead her to work as a Cranial Sacral Therapist, a meditation facilitator, and as an improvising musician, blending elements of healthcare, body awareness and creative expression within constraints. She has extended her love of the voice into the community with a project called MAW Vocal Arts.
Georgia’s latest book is a collaboration with Vivian Chong, Dancing After TEN (Fantagraphics 2020). Georgia's new project, Also True, is a grand departure from her previous works. Stay tuned for updates on her website, www.georgiawebber.com and the project site, www.alsotrue.xyz. Georgia facilitates weekly live practice sessions that connect health and creativity for a sustainable and satisfying art practice.
Josh Bayer, Instructor and Mentor
Josh Bayer lives in Harlem and has worked as a graphic novelist, fine artist and illustrator for 20 years. He is the editor of the anthology Suspect Device and the author of Theth, Raw Power, Theth Tomorrow Forever, RM and Black Star. Additionally he is the editor and writer of The All Time Comics imprint from Floating Wold Comics and Fantagraphics. Josh earned an MFA in Illustration and Cartooning in 2009, and has been teaching professionally since 2007. At SAW he teaches short courses in making comics and hosts a monthly comics group.
Sarah Maloney, Instructor and Mentor
Sarah (they/she) is a queer visual artist, storyteller and educator. Besides their most recent self published comic, The World Ends With A Poot!, they have self published over 12 comics and zines. Their work has appeared in The Stranger, The Believer, The Rumpus, Scarfff Newspaper and other rad indie publications. They recently graduated from CCA with their MFA in Comics. When they aren’t making comics you can find them selling comics at Silver Sprocket in SF. At SAW they teach Intro to Comics classes and mentor students in the FLOW + PUBLISH ongoing group.
Jen Sandwich, Mentor
Jen Sandwich is a Florida-based cartoonist who makes personal stories detailing the very real anguish of growing up, plus diary comics about being an adult. Jen has been a regular visiting artist to SAW’s Gainesville studio. These days she offers mentorship in the ongoing FLOW + PUBLISH group.
Elise Dietrich, Instructor and Mentor
Elise Dietrich is a scholar of Brazilian cultural studies who has experience both teaching and translating Portuguese. She began creating autobiographical comics in 2016. and has recently begun working as an illustrator.
Elise earned her PhD in Latin American Studies from Tulane University in 2014, with a focus on Brazilian Cultural Studies. Her research concerns representations of race, gender, and class in Brazilian popular music, literature, and media.
Originally from New Hampshire, she has lived in Brazil, Boston, New Orleans, the Hudson Valley, and Boulder Colorado. She currently resides with her family in Bristol, Rhode Island.
Vanessa Davis, Mentor
Vanessa Davis is an illustrator and cartoonist currently living in Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaniel Rage (Buenaventura Press, 2005) (re-released in March 2017 by Drawn and Quarterly) and Make Me a Woman, (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010).
Most recently she was the designer and a comics editor at Popula, where I also posted some stories. Other comics and illustration clients include: The Paris Review, The New York Times, Vogue, SpongeBob Comics, Tablet, and Amplify Education.
Vanessa is currently a mentor in the Graphic Memoir + Medicine Ongoing Working group.
Carly Shooster, Instructor (SAW Local)
Carly Shooster is a Jewish-American cartoonist based in Gainesville, Florida. She graduated from the California College of Arts with a MFA in 2022 and has since been working on her first Graphic Novel, Mamita. When she's not supporting community arts through her work at the Gainesville Fine Arts Association (GFAA), she's walking her dog and tending her garden.
Carly teaches kids and adult programs in the SAW studio and around Alachua County.
