Chicago’s Pretty Good Fest has revealed its special guest line-up for October and it’s an impressive one. The exhibitor list is pretty amazing too! Check that and other details out on the website here.
Pretty Good Fest Reveals Special Guests Chris Ware, Tara Booth, and Michael DeForge
Pretty Good Fest, the comics & small press festival in Chicago hosting over 120 cartoonists, small press publishers, book artists, and zine-makers, has announced this year’s lineup of special guests and programming. The free-to-attend fest, which will take place Saturday, October 24th, from 11 am – 6 pm at the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, will feature special guests:
Chris Ware
Chris Ware is an artist, writer and regular contributor to The New Yorker; his book Jimmy Corrigan – the Smartest Kid on Earth was awarded the Guardian Prize, Building Stories was chosen as a Top 10 Fiction Book and Rusty Brown a Top 100 Fiction Book by The New York Times. Ware’s new book, The Acme Novelty Library #21, will be debuted at this year’s fest.
Tara Booth
Tara Booth is an Eisner and Ignatz Award Winning comic artist, illustrator and painter from Philadelphia. Booth’s work has been featured in publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washing-ton Post, Vice, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Best American Comics. Booth’s new book, Sometimes All the Time, will be available at PGF.
Michael DeForge
Michael DeForge is an author and illustrator in Toronto. His published books include All The Cameras In My Room, Holy Lacrimony, Birds of Maine, Heaven No Hell, Familiar Face and Leaving Richard’s Valley. His illustrations have been featured in Jacobin, The LA Times, The Walrus, and Bloomberg Business Week. DeForge’s new book, All the Cameras in My Room, will be available at this year’s fest.
Special Programming
Pretty Good Fest pairs special guests with Chicago artists for live conversation & interview: director Joe Swanberg & Chris Ware, animator/curator Sarah Mae Schmidt & Michael DeForge, and artist Molly Colleen O’Connell & Tara Booth. All interviews are free to attend for festival attendees.
“I’m so excited to have Chris, Michael, and Tara with us this year,” says Matt Davis, director of Pretty Good Fest. “Having Chris’s latest Acme Novelty Library debut at Pretty Good Fest is really a dream come true.”
Pretty Good Fest ‘26 is sponsored by: Barrel Maker Printing, Campfire Printing Press, Challengers Com-ics, First Aid Comics, Howling Pages, PrintNinja, Quimby’s, The Sequential Artists Workshop, Sheep Cult Comics, and Skunk Cabbage Books.
Learn more at https://prettygoodfest.com/
