Red Emma’s

Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir was the most challenged book in the United States from 2021 to 2023. Eir writing and comics have been published in The Nib, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time Magazine. Maia’s second book is Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, a nonfiction comic about chest binding created with Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier. Eir third book is Opting Out, written with Lucky Srikumar, a middle-grade coming-of-age story from Scholastic Graphix. In eir free time, Maia practices taekwondo, studies Spanish, makes zines, and fights censorship.

Sarah Peitzmeier, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Her mixed-methods research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of gender-based violence, as well as LGBTQ+ health promotion. She has received funding from the NIH, the CDC, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and is best known for her research to understand, screen for, and intervene on intimate partner violence in transgender populations. She is also co-author (with Maia Kobabe) of the graphic novel _Breathe, _which is based on her research on chest binding in transmasculine individuals.

Lisa Diedrich is professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Her research and teaching interests are in critical illness and disability studies, feminist science studies, and graphic medicine. She is the author of Illness Politics and Hashtag Activism, Indirect Action, and Treatments.  Bri Martino is associate professor of Communication and affiliate faculty in Race, Gender, and Sexuality at the Gwen Ifill School of Media, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Simmons University. Their research and teaching interests are in queer visual cultural studies, mad/disability studies, feminist pedagogies, and graphic medicine. Lisa and Bri co-edited the collection Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine.

Elly Teman is a cultural and medical anthropologist who specializes in the Anthropology of Reproduction. Elly's first book, Birthing a Mother: the Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self, has received book awards in three categories from the American Anthropological Association.

Zsuzsa Berend (PhD, Columbia University) teaches economic sociology and oversees the departmental Honors program at UCLA. She did research on US surrogacy for over a decade and published a monograph, The Online World of Surrogacy.

Together, Teman and Berend have published six co-authored articles on their comparative surrogacy research and the graphic novel, A Tale of Two Surrogates: A Graphic Narrative on Assisted Reproduction.

MK Czerwiec (sir-wick) is a nurse, cartoonist, and educator. In addition to teaching graphic medicine at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern Feinberg Medical School, she is a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto, creator of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, LB & Me: A Tribute, Memoir, and an Invitation, and editor of the Eisner-award-winning Menopause: A Comic Treatment.

A. David Lewis is an Associate Professor of English and Health Humanities at MCPHS University in Boston, MA, as well as Director of its Health Humanities program. He is a GMIC Board member, Editor-in-Chief of the Graphic Medicine Review, and a former Eisner Award judge and nominee. Dr. Lewis has co-edited books including Graven Images, Digital Death, and Muslim Superheroes, and has written comics such as The Lone and Level Sands, The Prophet, and Kismet, Man of Fate.

Sydney Halpern is a historical sociologist whose work sheds light on moral dimensions of medical research and public health. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois Chicago and Lecturer at the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.  After a career of writing prose books, she is the author, with co-creator Trygve Faste, of the graphic history _Infected for Science, _and is delighted to now be immersed in the rich world of graphic narratives.

Laura Godfrey-Isaacs is an award-winning artist, writer, illustrator, and midwife working at the intersection of women’s health, feminism, and visual storytelling. As founder of Maternal Journal, a global community movement, she supports perinatal mental health and wellbeing through creative journaling. Her latest title, A Graphic Guide to Pregnancy and Birth (Icon Books, 2025), was created with illustrator and cartoonist Lilly Williams, and extends her pioneering work in visual health communication. Her forthcoming graphic memoir, Scar Tissue, will be the culmination of her interdisciplinary career: a vivid, urgent, and resonant story of how women’s bodies are scarred, stitched, and remade.

Grace Farris is a mom, doctor, and illustrator. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue.com, BuzzFeed, NewYorker.com and Women’s Health. She is a contributor to the women’s lifestyle blog Cup of Jo and NPR’s Health Shots. Her comics have been featured in exhibitions in the UK, Ireland, Austria and across the US. Her first book, Mom Milestones, published by Workman in March 2022, received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly and New York Times. Wirecutter listed Mom Milestones as one of “The 27 Best Gifts for New Moms of 2023,” calling it “an affirming read for new moms in particular, a literary road map of the very-hard-but-very-good path that lies ahead.” Farris graduated from Brown University and received her medical degree from Brown Medical School. She completed her bioethics fellowship at Harvard Medical School and is currently an Associate Professor of medicine and hospitalist at the University of Texas-Austin Dell Medical School. She lives in Austin with her family. Find her on Instagram at @coupdegracefarris.