THANK YOU SEATTLE! Our 2024 festival was a great success because of you! Thanks for showing up for comic & small press artists!
Our next festival will take place on Saturday, November 1st, 2025 at Seattle Design Center. 11 am – 6 pm. FREE admission.
Add yourself to our mailing list for deadline reminders and updates on upcoming local programming.
Update: Tara Booth unfortunately had to cancel, but we’re delighted that Julia Gfrörer could step in to talk with Angela Fanche during The Short Talk! 4 pm in front of the pavilion. Limited seating, dress warm! We will be selling Tara’s new book, “Becoming” at the Short Run Merch table.
Fill in your weekend surrounding the fest with these more intimate events! Listen to artist’s read from their work, participate in a workshop, view art from a dozen of the exhibitors and special guests, and come party with us! Full schedule below, with reminders to occur on Instagram starting Oct. 1.
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Joakim Drescher is a visual artist whose practice includes printmaking, drawing, painting, writing and publishing. Born in Denmark in 1986, he has lived in China, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the USA, before returning to Copenhagen in 2015, where he lives and works. His most well-known graphic novel series is “Motel Universe”, published by Secret Acres. Joakim designed our fest poster!
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We’re thrilled to be able to help these 5 exhibitors with travel costs to come to Seattle on Nov. 2nd.
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Thank you to everyone who applied! Click to see our exhibitor list! Special guests in bold.
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Five paid apprenticeships are available, beginning in August and running through October (nine Saturday afternoon sessions, exact dates listed in the application). Students will learn about the history of the comics medium, practice drawing and writing through prompts and exercises, spend time on comics fundamentals, and then produce their own mini-comic. Students will have work time in the studio, but will also need to do some work at home. Students will display & sell their comics together at the festival taking place on Saturday, Nov. 2nd, at Seattle Center.
UPDATE: The application period is now closed, and all applicants have been notified.
We’re thrilled to premiere our 2024 fest poster designed by Joakim Drescher.
Our 8th Trailer Blaze comics residency concluded on April 19th. We had an incredible week on the coast! We drew in our trailers and rooms and at picnic tables in the sun, spent many hours in the sauna, took long walks on the beach (and one plunge! A wave took Madeline’s glasses!), were visited often by Mr. Big (the tiniest dog) and Meatball (the campus cat). Alex harvested velella velella from the beach and roasted them with salt as an appetizer. We had delectable group dinners on the top floor and balcony, and Julia built a fire for us in the outdoor fireplace. There were side trips to the Antique Mall and Cape Disappointment, but for the most part, work happened: comic pages of many sizes on many kinds of paper, ideas organized on Post-It notes, outlines typed up, and breakthroughs were made. Read more…
Save the date for these upcoming artist talks! Free, limited seating. Read more…
Festival Photos by Chris Hong, @cx.photo.resu
Check out all our albums here!
Molly Colleen O’Connell from Berwyn, IL is our Dash Grant recipient this year, for her mini-comic “Pebbles #2” which will premiere at Short Run on Nov. 4th!
Pebbles 2: the next chapter in the story of an ornithophile who tries new meds. “It’s Total Recall meets Heathers” – Conor Stechschulte Read more…
We congratulate this year’s recipients of a Katie Kelso Travel Grant!
[Updated for 2024] If you haven’t been to a previous Short Run festival, you should know that we are unlike a mainstream “comic-con” in many ways. We are a free, one day festival that takes place in a large, 12,000 sq. ft. space on the ground floor, with tall front windows and a high ceiling. There are no smaller break-out rooms. There will be a few hands-on activities like zine-making or screen printing, but the main focus will be on the exhibiting artists showcasing their work at tables on the festival floor. Approximately 250 artists will be there, and we expect attendance to be about 4,500 people spread out over 7 hours. Read more…
[UPDATED for 2024!] Here are details about travel, lodging, WiFi, food, etc.! We are looking forward to seeing you and providing you with a great festival experience! Read more…
Find all fest photos on our Flickr page! Also check out this fest report by our photographer Chris Anthony Diaz, for The Comics Journal. Read more…
Another wonderful week at The Sou’Wester Lodge for our 7th annual Trailer Blaze Comics Residency, with 13 artists from all over – Seattle, Philadelphia, Hiroshima, Norfolk, Portland, Omaha, Haida Gwaii, Osoyoos! Read more…
Local artist and illustrator Julia Wald is this year’s DASH GRANT recipient! We were really excited about her story synapsis and hyper-color drawing style of her upcoming comic, Uncle Scam’s Army Navy Surplus, an autobiography of their first job out of school in Buffalo, working at an army navy surplus store where they sold military gear to doomsday preppers, zombie cosplayers, and neo Nazis. This first part of a much longer story will premiere at Short Run on Nov. 5th. Read more…
Each of these incredible artists & festival exhibitors will receive $400 towards their travel to Seattle for Short Run on Nov. 5th! Read more…