Paul Bunyan: The Invention of an American Legend

Noah Van Sciver is a multiple award-winning cartoonist who first came to comic readers’ attention with his Eisner-nominated comic book series Blammo. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, The Believer, the Best American Comics, as well as countless graphic anthologies. Van Sciver was a regular contributor to MAD Magazine and has written and drawn numerous bestselling graphic novels including One Dirty Tree, the Fante Bukowski: Struggling Writer series for Fantagraphics books and Joseph Smith And The Mormons for Abrams in 2022. In 2015 he was the Artist in Residence/fellow at the Center For Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. His books and comics are translated into more than 6 different languages around the world.  Marlena Myles is a self-taught Native American (Spirit Lake Dakota/Mohegan/Muscogee) artist who grew up on her traditional Dakota homelands. Her work includes children’s books, murals, fabrics, and augmented reality. Her fine art has been shown in places like the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Red Cloud Heritage Center, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art, to name a few. She enjoys using the land as a teacher to share with Minnesotans of all backgrounds the Indigenous history of thisplace we all call home. She runs her own Dakota publishing company, Wíyouŋkihipi (We Are Capable) Productions, to create a wider platform that educates and honors the culture, language, and history of Dakota people. She currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lee Francis IV is the Executive Director of Native Realities, an Indigenous Imagination organization that seeks to engage and inspire Indigenous youth and communities through pop culture media and culturally dynamic programming. Dr. Francis also founded the Indigenous Comic Con (now IndigiPop Expo) and opened Red Planet Books and Comics, the first Native comic shop in the world, in 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Education from Texas State University and currently resides in North Carolina with his family. Dr. Deondre Smiles is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. He is of Ojibwe, Black, and Swedish descent and is a proud citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Dr. Smiles's interests are many and include Indigenous geographies, human-environment interactions, and Indigenous cultural resource management and preservation. He serves as the principal investigator for the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory, one of Western Canada’s first Indigenous geographies-focused labs.