Artists L. Nichols and Kevin Czap read from their latest comics about finding your way home and making a better world.

L Nichols, now a celebrated multi-disciplinary artist, engineer and father of two, was born in small town, rural Louisiana, assigned female and raised by conservative Christians. Flocks is his memoir of that childhood, and of the expectations of his family, friends and community, the flocks of Flocks, that shaped and re-shaped him as a child.

Romantic friendships, überchic culture, magical solutions, kid think-tanks, and more make up Kevin Czap’s vision of not-so-distant America. What if the future began in a small, queer, punk music show in the basement of a Cleveland, Ohio, house? Fütchi Perf might not depict a perfect future, but its slice-of-life vignettes, drawn in a glorious, kaleidoscopic two-color palette, visualize a utopian dream that seems almost real, but perpetually out of reach.

L. Nichols’ illustrations and comics have appeared in the Village Voice, Gilt Taste, the Atlantic, BEA Rock Fest, Verve Magazine, the Zinester’s Guide to NYC, Smoke Signal, SMITH Magazine, the Nib, and the anthologies QU33R (Northwest Press) and Warmer: A Collection of Comics about Climate Change for the Fearful & Hopeful. He is the co-publisher (as Grindstone Comics) of the award-winning comics quarterly, Ley Lines, with Czap Books. He lives, and works as an illustrator, comic artist, graphic designer, educator and sometime blacksmith, with his wife and their two children in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Kevin Czap (pronounced “chap”) was raised in Northern Virginia, studied art in Cleveland, OH, and is now based in Providence, RI. They run the micropress Czap Books, endearingly referred to as “Comics Mom.” In 2016, Czap received the second annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) Emerging Talent Award for their work and involvement in the comics community.