Dear friends, partners, and fellow creators:
After 3 years of serving the Portland comics community and careful consideration, we’ve decided to end our programming and anthology.
Miss Anthology began as a passion project between Melanie Stevens and Emily Lewis while Melanie, now a professor, educational director, artist, and curator was still in grad school and Emily, now a graphic designer and cartoonist was a recent graduate and working part time as a barista. We were later joined by Mack Carlisle, who helped develop the early stages of program with us. Melanie and Emily both had little to no access to comics as kids and wanted to give young Portland creatives an opportunity to learn about comics in our community in a LGBTQIA2S+ safe space, help publish their comics, and provide paid teaching opportunities to local industry professionals.
We secured several grants, worked closely with Marrow PDX, Books with Pictures, and Portland Community College, and hired a team of 15 passionate, brilliant, and knowledgeable instructors, editors, and admin staff to help about 100 bright and talented students and creators accomplish their creative endeavors. We’re so proud of the work we’ve accomplished together over the years, seeing our students’ skills grow, seeing some graduate and go to college to publish their own webcomics and zines.
We’re sorry to deliver such sad news in the new year. Although Miss Anthology is closing its doors, Melanie and Emily will still be active in our local community and will lend support and make connections for our creators whenever we can.
Thank you,
Miss Anthology
Emily Lewis and Melanie Stevens
