Cecil Castellucci

Cecil Castellucci has spent two decades proving that stories for young adults can be as strange, brave, and beautiful as the readers who devour them. She’s the award-winning author of novels like Boy Proof, Tin Star, and Don’t Cosplay With My Heart, but comics fans know her best for The PLAIN Janes — the landmark Minx/DC graphic novel she created with artist Jim Rugg about a girl who starts a street-art collective, which helped kick-start the modern all-ages comics boom. She followed it with Odd Duck, Year of the Beasts, and Soupy Leaves Home before taking on the galaxy far, far away with the Leia-centric novel Star Wars: Moving Target.

At DC, she wrote Shade the Changing Girl for the Young Animal imprint and a celebrated run on Batgirl — stories that wear their weirdness with pride. Off the page, she’s also an indie rocker (under her stage name Cecil Seaskull) and an increasingly experimental performance artist, most recently walking her way through a year-long “Comic Book Walk” Kickstarter in which her arm became the book itself.

For Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins, Castellucci wrote Yasha Nydoorin — the storm-scarred barbarian whose gentle heart wars with the grief of everything she’s lost. It’s a perfect match: Castellucci has always written the quiet outsiders, the ones who carry pain like armor. Her Yasha is tender, furious, and unforgettable.

Perfect for fans of character-driven YA, boundary-pushing indie comics, and found family told with punk-rock heart.