About Us
St. Louis Independent Comics Expo (SLICE)
SLICE is an exposition of zines, chapbooks, lit mags, poetry, comics, small press authors, indie publishers, and print culture.
SLICE (formerly the St. Louis Small Press Expo) stimulates the independent literary and printing community by providing resources to authors and creators in the form of training, networking opportunities, and through the annual indie-print showcase that is our namesake.
SLICE’s mission is to support local, independent creators and make print arts accessible to St. Louisans. We aim to accomplish this by building community; collaborating with local artists and organizations; and offering free, public events to help artists grow and introduce people of all backgrounds and skill levels to comics, zines, and print arts.
Meet the Organizers
Your St. Louis Independent Comics Expo Organizing Team!
Steenz – President
Steenz is a St. Louis–based cartoonist, editor, and professor. They’re the cartoonist on the syndicated comic strip Heart Of The City, the co-creator of Dwayne McDuffie Award–winning Graphic Novel Archival Quality, and the co-creator of the Standard Comic Script. Steenz currently teaches cartooning at Webster University while editing titles from independent publishers and creators. They’re also working on their latest graphic novel, Side Quest: A Graphic Novel History of TTRPGs. They live with their spouse Keya and two cats Marko and Ripley.
Kat Vendetti – Secretary
Kat is a freelance comics editor, copyeditor, and proofreader based in St. Louis. She has worked as an assistant editor on Wayward Kindred from TO Comix Press, is a proofreader at AndWorld Design, and copyedits webcomics and graphic novels for WEBTOON. By day, Kat edits online courses for Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. They live with their cat, Spider, who is a goblin in disguise.
Teddy Key – Treasurer
Teddy is a baker and a patron of small press. He has assisted with organizing SLICE since 2018.
Brandon Daniels
Brandon Daniels is an author and teaching artist living in St. Louis. He teaches Illustration and Sequential Art at several local universities.
Audrey Westcott
Audrey is a graphic designer by day and an illustrator by night. She has held various in-house design jobs around St. Louis, the current being senior graphic designer with the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at WashU, her alma mater. She loves stories and storytelling of all textual, graphical, and comical forms, and her work is strongly narrative-driven across disciplines. She is also an avid cyclist and advocate for safer streets. She lives with her husband Daniel and their two pets, a tuxedo cat and a pittie.
Mikkel Snyder
Mikkel is a non-binary, Filipino-American writer based in STL and spends most of their time consuming media with a taste that is best described as “epicurean bordering on indiscriminate” in the company of their cats, Bellchime and Metronome. They make technical documentation for engineering software during working hours and experiment with every other genre and medium during the other waking hours.
Racheal M. Bruce
Racheal is a St. Louis-based illustrator and Assistant Professor in Illustration at Webster University. She specializes in book and editorial illustration, but her true loves are 19th century optical animation toys. She’s curious how an audience interacts with their own feelings of superstition, and her work imbues the feeling that a fantastical unreality could exist in our physical world, with all of the whimsy and eeriness that comes with it. Racheal’s won several awards for her illustration work, including a Cube Award from the 101st Annual Art Directors Club Awards for her project Excorio.
Portraits by Jonathan Marshall Smith
Policies and Procedures
Safe Space Policy
SLICE is a safe space, which means that it is intended to be a welcoming, engaging, and supportive environment free of oppressive actions, behavior, and language. Participants and attendees are asked to consider how their language and behavior impact others in attendance.
The following guidelines will help SLICE be a safer space:
• Respect people’s physical and emotional boundaries.
• Always get explicit verbal consent before touching someone or crossing boundaries.
• Respect people’s opinions, beliefs, differing states of being, and differing points of view.
• Be responsible for your actions and aware that they may have an effect on others regardless of original intent.
The following actions and forms of discrimination and abuse will not be tolerated:
• Racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of discrimination
• Theft of money or property
• Physical, verbal, or mental abuse
• Sexual harassment or inappropriate/unwelcome comments and behaviors
• Disruptive or disrespectful behavior
• Causing a participant or attendee to feel distressed or unsafe
Should an issue arise with a participant or attendee during the Expo, please come to the information table and ask for a SLICE organizer. Organizers will be available to hear these concerns and find a solution that is in the best interests of making the community and the event a safer space. The SLICE organizers reserve the right to ask any attendees who are violating the safe space policy to change or address their unsafe behavior or language, or leave the event if necessary.
Expo Day Terms and Conditions
Exhibitor applications will be accepted based on application quality, uniqueness, and available space, and will be chosen by members of the SLICE team. One table per applicant. SLICE reserves the right to deny any table application if the applicant does not meet the SLICE safe space policy terms and/or the applicant is showing items they do not have a right to sell.
If not initially accepted, applicants may be placed on a waiting list. These applicants will be contacted about said waiting list.
Exhibitor agrees not to hold SLICE and The Sheldon responsible for any lost, stolen, or damaged merchandise.
SLICE will not tolerate any actions or merchandise that are considered hateful towards a particular race, gender, sexuality, class, or disability or that make any attendee, staff member, or exhibitor feel unsafe. If content or actions are considered unacceptable by a party, a resolution will be mediated by SLICE organizers and the concerned parties.
SLICE reserves the right to request more information about the materials you intend to show. No table space is reserved until you receive confirmation from SLICE. Exhibitors’ contact information will be kept private. SLICE will not sell, trade, rent, or give away exhibitor contact information to a third party. Exhibitors give SLICE permission to use the information in the “Help Us Get To Know You Better” section of this form in the SLICE program, as well as for promotional purposes on slicexpo.org and in print. Exhibitors also give SLICE and The Sheldon permission to use any photos taken on the day of the event for promotional purposes.