Panel: Inside the World of Avatar, The Last Airbender

Peter Wartman is cartoonist and illustrator living in Minneapolis, MN. He is interested in all-ages stories about growing up and dealing with the messiness of the world (and in drawing cool fantasy cities and lots of sci-fi machines). His first published comic was released in 2011, Over the Wall, online. Since then, Over the Wall has been published by Uncivilized books, and he began working on its sequel, Stonebreaker. Currently, Peter has been working as the artist on the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels alongside writer Faith Erin Hicks.

F. C. Yee is the author of New York Times bestselling young adult novels, Avatar: The Rise of Kyoshi and Avatar: The Shadow of Kyoshi. His debut YA novel, The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, released in August 2017 to critical acclaim. Outside of writing, he practices capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts, and has a day job mostly involving spreadsheets.

Joan Hilty directs comics and graphic novel publishing at Nickelodeon, and is Editor-in-Chief of the book producer Pageturner. She has been a senior editor at DC Comics/Vertigo and a syndicated cartoonist. She co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival graphics committee and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Faith Erin Hicks is a writer and artist. She worked in the animation industry for several years before transitioning into writing and drawing comics full time in 2008. Her first published work was Zombies Calling in 2007. Since then, she has published a number of other graphic novels, including The War at Ellsmere, Brain Camp (with Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan), Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (with Prudence Shen), The Adventures of Superhero Girl (which won her an Eisner Award), and the middle-grade fantasy trilogy, The Nameless City. Comics Will Break Your Heart, her debut Young Adult prose novel, was published in 2019. The comics continuation of Nickelodeon’s hit series Avatar: The Last Airbender returns with a treasure trove of short stories as friends are back for a wide-ranging exploration of life in their world. This full-color hardcover collects short stories from The Lost Adventures and Team Avatar Tales (Dark Horse Books).

Gene Luen Yang writes, and sometimes draws, comic books and graphic novels. As the Library of Congress’ fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, he advocates for the importance of reading, especially reading diversely. His graphic novels include American Born Chinese; his two-volume Boxers & Saints; Secret Coders (with Mike Holmes), The Shadow Hero (with Sonny Liew), and the Avatar: The Last Airbender series (with Gurihiru). In 2016, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. In his latest graphic novel, Dragon Hoops, (First Second) Yang turns the spotlight on his life, his family, and the high school where he teaches. Gene understands stories—comic book stories, in particular. Big action. Big thrills. And the hero always wins. But Gene doesn’t get sports. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it’s all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships. Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’s lives, but his own life as well. In a starred review Booklist praised Yang as “an extraordinary cartoonist…through recurring visual motifs that connect a