Evva Karr
Evva Karr is an award-winning designer who is passionate about co-creating the future of play and building a better, more inclusive creative economy. They combine over 12 years of experience in design and business strategy with player insights and ecosystem building—previously at Activision Blizzard Media, Riot Games, and more.
As the founder and CEO of GLITCH, they have spent many years building a creator-led, cooperatively-owned movement backing bold new forms of play and the people who define them. GLITCH’s programs include the innovative Moonrise fund, which provides $120k-$250k equity checks for daring and ambitious creators with fresh perspectives on play, The Galaxy fund, which provides $10K grants to independent game creators for game prototypes, and the Founder’s Kit, a living collection of business tools and resources for game developers provided free to everyone. Evva and GLITCH are reinventing the whole landscape of game development to make it more accessible, inclusive, transparent, and inherently innovative.
As a 2020 Bush Fellowship recipient, Evva focused on sharing their design philosophy and discussing solutions that directly give power, influence, and freedom to game developers—specifically those seeking to create new modes of play for emerging audiences. Their talks have been featured at PAX in Seattle, Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, The Game Devs of Color Expo in New York, ACTcon in Minneapolis, and more. Evva has also been an Aspen Institute Scholar and SOCAP Scholar.
On the GLITCH Youtube channel, Evva is the creator of VTuber Melios and hosts the Toonami-inspired Future of Play Direct, an indie video game showcase featured on Twitch, IGN, and GameSpot. Future of Play Direct delivers interstellar announcement trailers and show-stopping premieres from game developers across the galaxy. Evva additionally teams up with Son M. to critically examine and expose deal practices in the gaming industry for their comedy series Publish Me, Punish Me. The GLITCH channel also highlights independent game developers in many other ways including via reaction videos, live concerts, interviews, and livestreams.
Learn more about Evva on their website and GLITCH on heyglitch.com. Follow Evva on Twitter as @EvvaKarr, and check out Future of Play Direct or Publish Me, Punish Me on YouTube.
Matthew Kessen
Matthew Kessen is the writer, performer, director, and curator of Reverend Matt’s Monster Science, a series of live comedy lectures on the enormous and varied subject of monsters. (“Part science. Part monsters. All comedy.”) Reverend Matt’s Monster Science discusses prehistoric monsters, the creatures of cryptozoology, and the out-and-out fictional, covering a truly multidisciplinary range of subjects—history, evolution, psychology, and much more besides.
Matt was born in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he has lived most of his life, with a brief stint in Missoula, Montana for college. He was an honors-college, gifted-and-talented sort of student, and was obsessed with monsters from a very young age. His collection of books on the topic numbers in the thousands, and includes scientific journals, medieval bestiaries, childrens’ books, and everything in between. He has traveled to Loch Ness, Scape Ore Swamp, and numerous other cryptozoological sites. Guillermo del Toro once told him, “You’re my kind of guy!”
Matt’s first major monster-related work was “The Godzilla Project,” a series of metatextual analyses of the early Toho Godzilla films for a webzine called The Noise in 2000. It was also around this time that he joined the theater group the Ministry of Cultural Warfare, his first major foray into performing professionally and writing for stage, which he has done with numberless theater companies since.
All of these threads came together in 2012, when Reverend Matt’s Monster Science first debuted as part of the Encyclopedia Show, a monthly multi-artist variety show in Minneapolis. Reverend Matt’s Monster Science would continue to appear as part of the Encyclopedia Show every month for several years. Meanwhile, Matt began producing longer-form Reverend Matt’s Monster Science as part of Fearless Comedy Productions’ annual Die Laughing comedy marathon. Reverend Matt’s Monster Science came into a greater flourish in 2017, with solo shows at the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Matt’s first of what would come to be annual shows at the Twin Cities Horror Festival theatrical event and at CONvergence. It was also the beginning of the Monster Science Ensemble—a series of collaborations with some of the Twin Cities’ top performers.
Since then, Reverend Matt’s Monster Science has appeared in libraries in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and at Fringe Festivals in Minneapolis and in Tucson, where it won Best Solo Show. Matt’s upcoming projects include moving into new media including video, podcasting, and print publishing.
Learn more about Matthew Kessen on his website, revmattsmonsterscience.com, and follow him on Facebook and on Twitter as @RevMattK.
Briana Lawrence & Jessica Walsh
Over 20 years ago Briana Lawrence and Jessica Walsh (Snow) were two fanfiction writing ladies who geeked out over Gundam Wing boys and Resident Evil. Now? They’re still geeks and still have their fandoms, but they’re also a cosplaying married couple who write books, discuss the importance of representation, and do their best to keep their three butt-head cats in line. (They’re failing. Send help.)
Briana has had a number of publications for various pop culture websites, including Funimation, SyFy Wire, Teen Vogue, and more. She currently works as The Fandom Editor for The Mary Sue where she writes about anime, manga, cosplay, fandom, and whatever ship is occupying her time. When she’s not trying to tell you why you need to marathon SK8 the Infinity, she’s working on her magical girl book series, magnifiqueNOIR, or having essays featured in anime books like the upcoming Essential Anime Guide being released by Crunchyroll.
Snow is also a writer and is hard at work on the third book in the couple’s Hunters urban fantasy series now that she’s launched her horror anthology Little Creepers. She’s also had her horror stories read on various podcasts such as Ghoul Intentions and the always spine-tingling Mr. Creepy Pasta. When she’s not writing, you can catch her (potentially swearing) at her sewing machine, working on various craft projects and cosplay where she designs variations of her and Briana’s favorite characters.
Don’t be surprised if you see one of them sporting a Super Mario Brothers dress or Toy Story-inspired ball gown.
When going to conventions, Briana and Snow always bring their best. You can get lost in their books—or heck—you can come by for a selfie and fun conversations about cosplay, anime, ships, or video games. (Use caution: if you start a conversation about Supergiant Games’ Hades they may never let you leave!)
Follow Briana on Twitter as @BrichibiTweets and Instagram as @brichibi. Follow Jessica on Twitter as @StoryTellerSnow and Instagram at @snowstoryteller. You can check out their books and other crafts over at their Etsy shop.
Charles Urbach
Charles Urbach is a colored pencil illustrator with more than 25 years experience in design and illustration. He began work in publishing/advertising in 1991, simultaneously earning a degree in illustration emphasizing traditional drawing, painting, and printmaking. Building on his dual experience in the academic and professional worlds, Charles developed a drawing process that combines pen & paper drawing and digital editing for sketches, with colored pencil techniques for the final artwork. The result is the hand-drawn, colored-pencil artwork with the depth and sophistication of paintings for which he has become known.
Charles’ published genre work includes hundreds of illustrations for the tabletop gaming industry, book covers, and marketing art for major gaming conventions including Origins Game Fair and Gary Con, and corporate graphic design & concept work such as for AT&T and miniatures designs for Wizkids’ Heroclix. You may recognize Charles’ style in illustrations for Magic: The Gathering, Star Wars, Legend of the Five Rings, and artwork for many other properties including Esper Genesis, Das Schwarze Auge, Infinite City, Doomtown Reloaded, A Game of Thrones, Call of Cthulhu, Lord of the Rings, and many others. He is a two-time Chesley Award winner, and his artwork has been recognized at Gen Con, Dragon Con, CONvergence, Origins Game Fair, JordanCon, PhilCon, and MarCon, among others.
Charles is a frequent Guest of Honor, panelist, and instructor at conventions and tournaments throughout North America and Europe. In addition to published work, Charles’ artwork is available via conventions and exhibits throughout the country.
Learn more about Charles Urbach and explore his art on his Facebook, and on Instagram as @charlesurbachart.
Jack Zipes
Jack Zipes is Professor Emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. In addition to his scholarly work, he is an active storyteller in public schools and written fairy tales for children and adults.
Among his many awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Brothers Grimm Award, the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy, a Leverhulme Fellowship from Anglia Ruskin University, and World Fantasy Convention Award for Lifetime Achievement (2019).
In his happy retirement, Jack founded a small publishing house called Little Mole and Honey Bear. Some of his recent publications include: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales (2017), Tales of Wonder: Retelling Fairy Tales through Picture Postcards (2017), Fearless Ivan and His Faithful Horse Double-Hump (2018), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (2018), Slap-Bam, The Art of Governing Men: Édouard Laboulaye’s Political Fairy Tales (2018), The Giant Ohl and Tiny Tim (2019), Johnny Breadless (2020), and Hermynia zur Mühlen’s The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales (2020).
His new mission in life is to unbury dead and neglected authors of fantasy before he himself is buried and to create conditions for a better world through the imagination.
Learn more about Jack Zipes on Little Mole & Honey Bear’s website, on his Wikipedia page, and follow him on Facebook.
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