TORONTO, CANADA—The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) proudly announces that international manga superstar Aya Kanno will attend the 2015 Festival as a Featured Guest! Aya Kanno is the author of the Blank Slate, the New York Times bestselling series Otomen, and the newly-released Requiem of the Rose King, all published in English by VIZ Media. Kanno will participate in a variety of programs at the Festival including a feature interview, panel discussion, and book signing sessions. Aya Kanno will attend TCAF 2015 with her editor Yuri Yamamoto of Akita Shoten, and with the support of VIZ Media.

“We’re so happy to be able to welcome Aya Kanno to North America for the first time,” enthused Festival Director Christopher Butcher. “To my mind Kanno’s work really reinforces what TCAF is all about: unique, diverse voices and great comics! Shoujo manga, or ‘girls’ manga, doesn’t really get the respect it deserves in general, and Kanno’s work is specifically great, smartly interrogating the medium and its approach to gender, sexuality, and storytelling.”

Aya Kanno’s best-known work in North America is the romantic comedy series Otomen, which ran for 18 volumes, frequently appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. The romantic comedy series explores a wide variety of characters that rebel against traditional gender roles in Japanese society, starting with the titular character who is an Otomen (“otome,” Japanese for young girl, combined with the English word “men”). Kanno’s newest work is the just-released Requiem of the Rose King, a dark fantasy retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III and Henry VI, which continues the manga creator’s exploration of gender, sexuality, and identity, but this time in the context of historical and literary fiction.

Aya Kanno will join a very diverse array of Japanese manga creators already announced for TCAF 2015, including the cartooning duo Gurihiru (Avatar: The Last Airbender), gay manga originator Gengoroh Tagame (The Passion of…), and indy manga creator Ken Niimura (Henshin, I Kill Giants).

A full schedule of Aya Kanno’s appearances at TCAF 2015 will be announced in April, 2015.

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