Venessa Vida Kelley is a Washington, DC-based author, illustrator, and sequential artist. Her work focuses on magical realism, fantasy, and culturally diverse romance. Venessa has been featured alongside the works of such authors as Casey McQuiston, TJ Klune, Everina Maxwell, Sophie Gonzales, Becky Albertalli, Sarah Rees Brennan, Alexis Hall, Jennifer Weiner, and others, as well as the marketing campaign for Amazon Studio’s highly-anticipated movie adaptation, “Red White & Royal Blue.” Her graphic novel debut, MANU FACES THE MUSIC, is in development with Oni Press, with her first illustrated adult historical fiction novel WHEN THE TIDES HELD THE MOON set to debut with Erewhon Books in 2025.

Connect with Venessa on: Instagram or her website. And support her work via Patreon and Etsy.

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• More about Heather via @heather_vickeryandco on Instagram, @Braveheather on TikTok, and listen to The Brave Files
• More about Alan via @theatre_podcast on Instagram and listen to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales

EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

• Venessa dreamed of being an animator as a child and fell in love with sequential art
• Sequential artist is the fancy term for comic art
• One of the original viral “fan artists,” Venesssa never lost sight of her passion even when working in voiceover and marketing for The Federal Government
• When her day job got a little too heavy, Venessa would retreat to a novel for pleasure and create sketches from those works. A random share on Twitter turned viral and catapulted Venessa to the core of fandom love.
• Much of Venessa’s artwork is driven by the desire to get books she loves in front of a larger audience.
• She has always worked to support BIPOC and LGBTQ authors and help raise awareness for their work.
• Venessa’s art is mostly digital art because it’s fast and doesn’t take a lot of expensive resources but she begins with pencil and paper sketches.
• Eventually, it became impossible to have a day job and make art professionally. She chose her own graphic novel and we’re all so glad she did.
• Be the ladder - Venessa loves helping other artists to value themselves and fight for their fair share, especially in the face of AI art.
• We love Venessa’s approach to “failure” She believes in a “Bless your mistakes” approach to life.
• In the episode, we talk about emotional deficit - what it is and how to deal with it.
• There is NO wasted time - ever. All of Venessa’s past experiences are showing up in her own work and she’s wildly grateful for all of her experiences.
• It wasn’t until Venessa was in her 30s that she began to untangle her identity and embrace her Queer identity.