Guests
C.S. PACAT
C.S. Pacat is the New York Times and USA-Today best-selling author of Dark Rise, the Captive Prince trilogy, and the GLAAD-nominated graphic novels Fence, as well as a writer for DC Comics.
Educated at the University of Melbourne, C.S. Pacat has since lived in a number of cities, including Tokyo and Perugia, and currently resides and writes in Melbourne.
TAMEKOU
In partnership with AKATA, donât miss out on the coming of the prolific Tamekou, one of the most promising mangaka thanks to her drawing and the writing of her characters.
Tamekou is a japanese mangaka who started her BL career in 2014. Her work gets soon noticed with the bold Youâre My Sex Star and Deiichi no Hasou, both stressing her taste for psychological stories. She regularly explores topics such as love overcoming body bias and the impact of secrecy on intimacy. In 2017, she creates Boku no Himejima-kun, a shojo, and Lala no Kekkon, a BL, both titles can be categorized as gender-benders and deal with cross-dresser protagonists.
In 2018, Tamekou starts the josei My genderless boyfriend, a slice of life type of story focusing on Wako and her androgynous boyfriend Meguru. He is passionate about fashion and make-up and he is adamant on looking the prettiest for her. The serie is so successful that a j-drama adaptation of 10 episodes airs in 2021.
Volume 1 will be available at Y/CON! Get your goodies and a copy of My genderless boyfriend on Akataâs booth.
ARONE
My name is Arone, Iâm 22 years old and I have been cosplaying since November 2020. I cosplay as a hobby but also professionally. Iâve been known mostly thanks to my cosplays of the manga and the anime Attack on Titan on Tiktok and Instagram…I also often show my SNK cosplays in conventions such as Japan Touch, Japan ExpoâŠ
For a more personal biography, Iâve been living with my best friend and my cat in Lyon for almost a year now. Iâm training in pastry baking to open my own teahouse in Colmar on the theme of Howlâs Moving Castle! Iâve been interested in sewing for about two months now and Iâm making more and more of my own cosplays. My life is not very exciting apart from work and taking care of my cat.
ATHYESS
Iâve been a professional voiceover artist for five and a half years, and an illustrator. I am one of the project managers on the French version of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss and I am also he voice of Vaggie in Hazbin Hotel.
Iâm also working on the illustrations for the two French anime versions as well as on several side projects. Personal projects, for friends or for Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss
I sometimes appear in a few videos on YouTube but my field being voice over I rarely do dubbing. Iâm involved in many creative hobbies, painting, sculpture, sewing, etcâŠ
GOTYOSIN
Creator of content on different platforms, I was able to surround myself with a community thanks to TikTok. I deal with different themes but mostly:Â cosplay, gender expression and non-binarity.
I try to combine artistic references, reflection around gender and references to anime in my videos and photo content.
KOCHEI
Having always been passionated about mythology, the Arthurian legend has long been in the back of my mind, but it was when I broke my ankle in early 2020 that inspiration struck.
Indeed, Webtoon was looking for creators and I felt the need to immerse myself in something gargantuan to pass the time during my recovery.
The characters slowly came to life and itâs really the start of it. As I was imagining their features, their scenes, their dialogues and the world around them, I thought about how to introduce others into this universe in a way that I am interested in. The choice fell on Perceval, an ingenuous and so, perfect for discovering things through his eyes.
LGBTQ+ themes are very important to me and I see the fantasy world as a perfect opportunity to normalise it to the extreme. Itâs a world that looks like ours without being ours, so I decided that it would be a world where we are free to be and love whoever we want. And so all my characters, without exception, are LGBT. In a way, itâs a theme without being one, since itâs not the center of the plot, itâs never even approached in itself because it is fully accepted in the universe.
Historicity is not really my bias and in general -not only on Gradalisâ even if I draw inspiration from History for everything that interests me, I donât take the things that would interfere with my story.
LA BRIOCHĂE
La Briochée is a dragqueen artist, comedian and cabaret singer who participated in the first season of Drag Race France
An openly trans woman, activist and campaigner for better trans representation in the French media, she is also a dubbing and voice-over actress.
She became known in this field with her interpretation of Angel Dust in the French version of the cartoon pilot « Hazbin Hotel ». Since then, she has worked on various projects (« Manhas de Septembro » on Prime Video, « The girlfriend who did not exist » Netflix, the role of Osa in the video game « Rainbow Six Siege » and many others).
LILY HAIME
After 10 years on the other side of the World, Lily Haime is back in Bordeaux, by Lacanauâs shores. There, she can give free reign to her passions. Music, biopics, History, medicine, art, complicated stories⊠She loves walking barefoot and compiling her sonâs laughs. Enjoy time with her loved ones and build her nest in a crumbling house.
And, of course, getting lost in words. Whether they are beautiful or tough, ancient or contemporary, it is a magic that appeals to her. Because Lily grew up surrounded by books, and writing is an endless source of freedom for her. The characters that come to life under her pen are always touching and accurate.
SHUNSUKE AND ARIDERION
Shunsuke is a Professional Swiss Cosplayer, Model and Photographer who has guested at numerous events around the world showcasing his love and talent for cosplay.
His passion for craftsmanship has taken him to the World Cosplay Summit in 2019 representing Switzerland as well as working with international companies and projects.
Ariderion is one of the biggest cosplay names in the Balkans as well as a professional fashion model. Mostly known for their takes on popular BL characters, they have been flourishing on the cosplay scene for over five years.
Due to their natural androgenous looks and makeup skills, they challenge gender norms through their work and love to experiment.
VIOLETTE BANKS
Violette Banks has been writing full stories since she was 9 years-old. Fortunately, her style has improved a bit since then.
Very often, she navigates between fantasy and science fiction, but the public only knows of her contemporary gay romances with a touch of biting humor. For now.
She lives in the French countryside with her cat (Alec) and her hen (Rosa) who donât know anything about her stories of handsome guys falling in love.
Instagram –Â Facebook –Â Site internet
Speakers
Amélie C. Astier
For AmĂ©lie C. Astier, also known as AMHELIIE for self-publishing, writing is as essential as eating and sleeping. By night, she gives life to the multitude of characters that populate her imagination. Some say that sheâs not alone in that head of hers, and good luck to anyone trying to contradict that. AmĂ©lie is prone to put all those characters in any universe, as long as thereâs a good amount of romance. Sheâs been writing love stories of any form for almost ten years now, solo or in pair with Mary Matthews (Maryrhage).
David Halphen
David Halphen, scriptwriter and creator behind the project Les Incroyables Aventures de FusionMan, directed by Xavier Gens and Marius Vale for Canal Plus, is the instigator and author of Fusion Man.
When he is not writing the story of Fusion Man, he is developing short and feature film projects (Wordless, Renaissance or La Jeune Femme et lâEscargot) and other comic book projects BDs.
Gay culture has always been in his orbit. Having spent his senior year analyzing Brokeback Mountain and then organizing events with actors from Queer as Folk, The L Word and Buffy the Vampire, during his film studies, itâs safe to say that LGBT representation in contemporary fiction has become one of his favorite topics.
F.V. Estyer
Since childhood, F.V. Estyer is an avid reader. She gains recognition sharing her writing on forum before delving into publishing in 2016. Sheâs writing contemporary and paranormal romance but itâs in the M/M genre that sheâs the more prolific, letting her explore wide types of themes.
James Welker
James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan. He researches gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary Japan with a particular focus on queer manga and its fans, the LGBT community, and feminisms. He also researches global fandoms of boys love (BL), yuri/girls love (GL), and other queer manga, anime, games, etc. from Japan. Since 2019, he has been part of a research team led by Professor Yukari Fujimoto that has been participating in and observing fan conventions around the world to better understand the relationship between BL, yuri, and other queer media from Japan and local LGBTQ cultures and identities. He is at Y/Con 8 (with Professor Fujimoto) as part of that research.
Mary Matthews
In another life, Mary Matthews was a rockstar. Known as MARYRHAGE for self-publishing, sheâs a music and TV shows aficionado and shares her life with her son, her goldfish and her plants. Even if she claims being more grounded that her co-writer, she admits that writing is a good way to get out of her head and escape from whatâs sometimes clogging it.
Yohann Antoine
Yohann Antoine is a comic artist and illustrator from Lyon. He is the author of the comic strip ELIO, the story of a young gay merman exploring our modern world.
Yohann loves drawing mermaids and continues to expand the universe of his characters through several small comics while addressing themes that are dear to him such as homosexuality.
Yukari Fujimoto
Yukari FUJIMOTO is professor at the School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University, Tokyo, where she lectures on manga culture as well as gender and representation with a special focus on female manga genres. While working as an editor at Chikuma Publ, her own publications since the late 1980s have made her Japanâs most renowned critic with respect to shĆjo, BL and yaoi manga. She had been a board member of Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics for more than 10 years since its foundation. She has published five monographs in Japanese so far, including the critically acclaimed Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aruno? [Where do I belong?] (Asahi Shinbun Shuppan) and more.