new york comic con panel reveal!!!!!
bonus: the audio from my dream con panel, featuring ariyon dailey, is available to stream!
good morning subscribers! i’m attending my first new york comic con as a panelist!!!!!
when i pitched this panel to dream con in january, i had no idea that it would be accepted and adored. ariyon and i entertained at least 60 guests at dream con, which gagged us both! as a treat, i have linked our convo at the bottom of this newsletter.
with a combination of my post-con confidence and post-layoff delusion, i pitched it to nycc, and i’m so thrilled that a group of librarians and educators enjoyed it enough to add it to nycc’s professional programming with the new york public library.
icymi: i’m writing the proposal for misogynoir and multiverses: a black girl’s guide to fandom culture, my forthcoming nonfiction essay collection about the racism and sexism directed toward black women in science fiction and fantasy media.
if you’re attending nycc, stop by my panel on thursday, october 9, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm at the river pavilion stage 2 in the javits center. view more info on their website! in the meantime, meet my panelists. i am so honored to be in such wonderful company for my pre-proposal press (again!!!!) with nadira goffe, kaitlyn mcnab, and jordan brown.
Nadira Goffe is a Brooklyn-based culture writer and podcaster for Slate. Her written work primarily focuses on Black culture, film and television, internet culture—where she is most known for explaining the latest drama unfolding on your algorithm—and all things related to her hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though that hasn’t stopped her from writing about her odd foodie tendencies and her not-so-secret obsession: K-pop and K-dramas.
As a longtime lover of everything vampires, lycanthropes, and witches, Nadira’s work has also proven her fantasy bona fides. She has decoded Sinners, appraised the revival of MTV’s hit teen drama Teen Wolf, and gone to bat for one of the best shows currently on television (her words), AMC’s Interview With the Vampire. In fact, she’s probably somewhere talking someone’s ear off about how society hasn’t been well since True Blood ended as we speak.
Kaitlyn McNab is an award-winning journalist, the Culture Editor at Teen Vogue, and a multimedia storyteller based in New York. She is a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, from which she holds a self-designed B.A. titled How to Tell Stories While Black and a minor in Africana Studies. Kaitlyn co-leads Teen Vogue’s entertainment coverage and has interviewed pop culture vanguards like Millie Bobby Brown, Issa Rae, and Dominique Thorne; in addition to her work at Teen Vogue, Kaitlyn has also written for GQ, Allure, i-D, Bustle, and EBONY. Kaitlyn's poetry and prose have appeared in Electric Literature, and she is currently working on her debut novel, original pilot, and revising her first original feature screenplay. Kaitlyn’s lifelong creative mission is to celebrate and articulate diverse Black experiences.
Jordan R. Brown, M.M., M.A. (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology and Presidential Scholar at Harvard University with a secondary field in African and African American Studies. She is currently chair of Harvard University’s Graduate Music Forum, co-chair of Project Spectrum Music, and a UNESCO Youth Ambassador for Peace and Intercultural Dialogue. Grounded in Black politics, feminist theory, and queer theory, her research examines alternative R&B, alternative hip-hop, and the cultural spaces they create, including virtual worlds studied through video game and animation ethnography. Her work will be supported by the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, where she will serve as the Dorothy Porter Fellow during the 2025–2026 academic year. She identifies as a performer-scholar under the musical alias J-Renee, and intends to continue bridging the two practices in her future work.
aren’t their bios so lovely? if you want to read about me, my bio is available here.
if you’re going to nycc, hop in the comment section to let me know what panels to attend and who to link up with. y’all already know i will be cosplaying.
here’s the live recording from dream con! listen at low volume—apologies in advance for the rough audio patches. take a shot everytime i say sinners or well, yes!
timestamps for your convenience:
introduction and meet the panelists 0:00
announcing misogynoir and multiverses 2:06
representation of black characters and the inspo for m&m 3:34
sinners and sexy black vampires 7:06
expectations for dream con and cosplaying 13:53
amc a-list, friendship, and fanfiction 15:23
candice patton, anna diop, and the black women who inspire me 20:25
i <3 interview with the vampire 24:31
writing a book is hard 27:30
barking break (literally) 32:35
bisexuality mention! more about the book’s gay chapter 32:58
sexiest scene from a sci-fi or fantasy film and the eroticism of vampries 37:35
pokemon mention! my obsession with eevee and nintendo 39:46
who is this book for? 41:14
we literally hate ai 43:00
thank you to my nerds and besties (and the knowles sisters) 44:10
where is the damn book… 47:52
q&a: holding space for the black women of marvel 49:59
q&a: how do i feel about the actress change for claudia in iwtv? 52:17
q&a: the disposable black girlfriend trope 52:59
q&a: white supremacy is why our interests are deemed “white interests” 55:19
q&a: we’re heading in a better direction with black female characters 57:29
final thoughts and i forgot to hit end on the recording, including ariyon saying, “wait, hold on, there was a dreadhead in here that says he listens to kelela. i should have grabbed him the moment he said it.” kelelaliens rise!!! 1:00:00