Dan Johnson recaps BIPOC POP 2026!

Xavier Garza (Moderator), John Picacio (Illustrator-Author), Frederick Luis Aldama (Author and Editor) at the San Antonio Book Festival April 11, 2026 San Antonio has always felt like a city that holds memory in its bones. The riverwalk and historic el marcado hums with it. The food carries it. And every spring, the San Antonio Book Festival draws together the storytellers who know how to excavate that memory and put it on the page, the panel, the panel, the illustrated sprea

In this reflective essay, Erika Abad traces her years-long collaboration with artist Justin Favela, exploring what it means to let go of past selves, embrace rest, and build community through Latinx art, memory, and care. Moving between studio moments, family ties, and cultural connection, this piece considers how slowness, joy, and collaboration shape new beginnings.

Sam Ceballos and Henry Barajas get into the creating of noir comics. Through storytelling, digital art creation, and research Barajas breaks down what it means to be a comic writer.

Veronique Medrano and Paloma Martínez-Cruz map a vision of Latinx creative practice that is expansive, rigorous, and utterly alive.

Every piece of media makes an argument about who we are, and to interact with it means to internalize, consciously or not, the assumptions it carries. For Caribbean and Afro-Latinx communities, the stakes of these arguments run deep. Music, television, and film now ricochet across the globe at light speed, and with that reach comes a paradox: the pressure to include “diverse” characters often lands in the hands of creators who haven’t done the homework. The result? Representa

What happens when you build spaces where BIPOC creators, scholars, students, and communities can come together not just to consume stories but to make them?

Ex-Perimento is a book about love, healing family relations, and navigating womanhood.

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Stories where the drama isn’t “will they accept me?” but “how do we build a life together in a world that’s still structurally hostile?”

Bad Bunny performs at Superbowl LX and gives it a whole Brown Optic makeover.

The Underrepresentation of Latinx Bodies in Sci-Fi For decades, science fiction has imagined the future as a place where brown bodies either don’t exist or only survive as villains, aliens, or disposable labor. The genre loves to predict tomorrow, but it often does so by erasing Latinx/o/a people from it entirely. When we do appear, we’re trapped in a racialized past, tied to violence, intuition, and survival rather than progress. Sci-fi futures may look global, but their hi

"We do projectile deflection on Mondays"

If this last episode of the year from The Simpsons has anything to teach, it is that community is made stronger by forging friendships and turning strangers into neighbors.

Critical Incident and The Alabama Solution cover and contribute to the ongoing conversation around the Border Industrial Complex (BIC) and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) respectively.

Popo the Xolo (2025), author Paloma Angelina Lopez, and author celebrating Día de Muertos at The Ohio State University Paloma Angelina Lopez is a Mexican-American author currently living in the US. Her family hails from Jalisco and Guanajuato on her mother's side and Zacatecas and Sinaloa on her father's side. Her debut, Popo the Xolo (2025), grew from the loss of her own abuela a few years prior. Written in Spanglish and Spanish, the book celebrates both modern Mexican

Explore Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths, a modern reimagining of the Greek hero Achilles that delves into mental health, resilience, and the struggle between despair and survival. This powerful song blends myth, emotion, and music to create a moving story of quiet heroism.

At Latino Comics Expo 2025, held at Long Beach's Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA), five comic artists came together to talk with me and a crowd of LCX attendees about From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides: A Latinx Comics Anthology.

In conversation between Meza-León and Iturriaga at the Latino Comics Expo 2025 they discuss their creative journeys, the making of Batman Azteca, and the future of Latinx storytelling in animation.

What I love about Las Hermanas Iglesias is the collaboration across coasts and generations that they embody as an articulation of how resisting erasure, of centering acknowledgement with extreme care, demonstrates the strength and determination possible within this state of uncertainty and the full embodiment of the ancestries and lineages we carry.