Award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, animator, storyteller & academic based in Los Angeles.

Dr. Melanie West is a cartoonist, illustrator, animator, storyteller, and academic based in Los Angeles and currently teaching at California State University Los Angeles in the Pan-African Studies Department. She received her PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego and is a recipient of several awards at UC San Diego including the 2022-2023 President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, the 2021-2022 Sara Clarke Kaplan Predoctoral Fellowship, and the 2015 Octavia. E. Butler Memorial Fellowship to attend the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop. In 2022, Dr. West won the logo contest to redo the promotion design for the Graduate Student Caucus of the Comic Studies Society. In 2014, Dr. West was awarded Best Studio Artist of the Year by Nazareth University for her undergraduate thesis on political cartoons. She is currently working on a new series of animated, satirical cartoons personifying political symbols in the United States.

Dr. West is an interdisciplinary artist-academic and Black comix artist from Rochester, New York. She has been a committed cartoonist since completing her bachelor’s degree in Studio Art at Nazareth University.  Her visual influences include underground artists Junko Mizuno and Melinda Gebbie.