What to know
- Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) has spent 20 years building a uniquely community-driven comics festival in Toronto by connecting emerging creators with established industry veterans.
- Executive director Amie Wright says TCAF intentionally reserves about 25% of exhibitor spots for early-career artists, creating mentorship opportunities and helping launch new comics talent.
- TCAF helped pioneer international and queer representation in North American indie comics festivals, spotlighting manga, Latin American, and European artists while fostering an inclusive space for 2SLGBTQIA+ creators and fans.
For one weekend a year, Toronto turns into a comic and graphic novel lover’s dream as hundreds of writers, artists, and small publishers come to the city for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, more commonly known as TCAF.
The festival was co-funded in 2003 by Peter Birkemoe — who also runs Toronto indie bookshop The Beguiling — and Christopher Butcher, who ran TCAF as its artistic director until 2020.
TCAF was famously held at the Yonge Reference Library until it outgrew the space last year. It was relocated to the Mattamy Centre. TCAF 2026 will be its 20th in-person gathering.
Now Toronto had the opportunity to chat with TCAF’s executive director, Amie Wright, about the festival’s origins and the importance of spotlighting independent artists.
Wright says TCAF came into existence because Birkemoe was inspired by similar independent festivals, like the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France. He also took inspiration from Small Press Expo, held in Bethesda, M.D., which she says is a “TCAF equivalent.”
New and emerging artists
One of the things Wright loves about TCAF, and tries her best to make happen, is mixing artists and writers who are already quite successful with up-and-coming talent.
“Every year, we really try to spotlight new and emerging artists,” she explains. “We try to aim for about 25% of our exhibitors to be early career professionals, people who just graduated, or maybe people who’ve made a transition into art as a career.”
Wright admits it’s unusual to see emerging artists table next to artists who have logged years, if not decades in the comic arts industry, but she loves to see the mentorship and camaraderie that results.
“I love to see the mentorship, the sense of community, and the sense of camaraderie and communication that you can see when artists are tabling with other artists.”
At TCAF 2026, cartoonist Tillie Walden is coming as one of the spotlight guests. Wright says she remembers seeing Walden when they were just starting out at a small press expo.
“The idea of seeing somebody when they’re starting out their career, and then seeing them again once they’ve become so successful, that’s something that feels special and magical in a way that’s very accessible too,” she elaborates.
Spotlighting international talent
TCAF has never boxed itself into only highlighting artists from North America. Since its founding, the festival’s mission has been to “spotlight the comic arts across different aspects.”
Wright says TCAF was one of the first independent festivals in North America to showcase manga artists, artists from Europe, and artists from Latin America.
“Finding something in translation from a new artist that I had never seen before is something I find so special,” she says.
She says artists themselves also appreciate the diversity, as they’ll often say, “I got into indie comics because I wanted to see my own lived experiences from my community, my family, myself, on the shelf in a way that I had never experienced growing up.”
Queer representation
Over the years, TCAF has become a safe space for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Not only are more queer people attending the festival, but there have also been a large number of queer vendors and artists tabling.
Wright says queer representation actually has been an integral part of the festival from the beginning and an aspect they’ve tried to promote. Year over year, one of TCAF’s main offsite events is the Queer Mixer.
“At one of our first queer mixers, Alison Bechdel was actually there as a spotlight guest.”
In 2025, Wright realized just how important TCAF was to the queer community, especially with the increasing hostility they’re facing in the United States.
“Last year, we were like, ‘This is actually creating a safe, inclusive space in North America, in a way that unfortunately, doesn’t really exist right now for artists in North America,’” she explains.
Dismissal of comics
Despite TCAF’s continued popularity and record-breaking attendance records, the festival still seems to be a “if you know, you know” event in Toronto.
In Wright’s opinion, it’s because people continue to be very dismissive of comics, “a billion dollar industry that’s keeping reading afloat all across North America.” She points to one of the arguments from the 1950s, which was that comics were bad for reading and would promote illiteracy.
“A lot of people have internalised this idea, when, in fact, comics are what we would call multimodal, because they’re combining images and text,” Wright explains. “They’re actually a more efficient way of communication.”
