Bianca Xunise
Bianca Xunise is an American cartoonist, illustrator, and self-described "goth of color". Her work is nationally syndicated through the Six Chix comic strip collaborative. Early life Xunise was born in Chicago to artistic parents; her mother was a fashion designer. Her family has Creole roots. She started as a fashion blogger, but quit "because they didn't want to indict George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case and after that I realized I [didn't] care what I'm wearing anymore." Career Xunise's influences include Finnish artist Tove Jansson, Austrian children's book illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans, and Japanese manga artist Naoko Takeuchi. She credits her professional start in comics to online community for women Hello Giggles, which gave her a column in 2015. Xunise had been featured in the Nib and Shondaland when King Features Syndicate asked her to create a Popeye tribute strip. In 2018 she won the Ignatz Award for "Promising New Talent" for her self-published "Say Her Name", which deals with the anxiety of being black in America. In 2020, she became the second Black woman contributing to a nationally syndicated strip, when she became one of the Six Chix. She was preceded in this distinction by Barbara Brandon-Croft, whose daily strip Where I'm Coming From was nationally syndicated from 1991 to 2005. With her Six Chix debut, Xunise also became the first Black nonbinary cartoonist to be nationally syndicated. References External links Official website "Say Her Name" - on Southsideweekly.com Living people American comic strip cartoonists 21st-century American illustrators Artists from Chicago 21st-century American women artists American female comics artists American people of Creole descent Ignatz Award winners University of Illinois Chicago alumni DePaul University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) American women illustrators African-American comics creators African-American illustrators American women cartoonists American women academics 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American artists