GUESTS
THE BRIGHTEST STARS
FujoCon brings BL manga-ka, authors, academics, industry insiders, and fujoshi influencers straight to you!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ✧ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
RENJI RANGE
MANGAKA
Renji (蓮地). Manga author/illustrator. Main work: “Monster and the Beast (vols. 1-3)” (Kadokawa Future Publishing).
Currently posting original manga works on Twitter.
Kei Ichikawa
Born in Akita Prefecture and raised in Chiba Prefecture, Kei Ichikawa is a manga artist from Tokyo, Japan. Debuted with “Slow Starter” (Libre), Kei Ichikawa is known for works such as “Blue Sky Complex” (Tokyo Mangasha), “Slow Starter” (Libre), “Stray Bullet Baby” (Kodansha) and others.
MIYAMON
MANGAKA
Miyamon is a guest of FujoCon courtesy of Rotten Blossoms. After working a few years at a digital publishing firm as a designer, Miyamon has been working in female oriented illustrations as a freelancer for more than 15 years now. In 2020, she was bit with the BL bug and began posting stories on Twitter, Pixiv, and other social media. Miyamon recently made her official debut as a Teens Love mangaka in November of 2021. She continues to work on her career as a TL mangaka while creating BL doujin.
SUIKA
TRANSLATOR
Suika is an avid reader of BL, specifically of Danmei in recent years. She is the official translator for Heaven Official's Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, both written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. Information for both titles can be found on SevenSeasDanmei.com
PENGIE
TRANSLATOR
Pengie is a longtime fan of queer media. She is the official editor for Heaven Official's Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, both written by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. Information for both titles can be found on SevenSeasDanmei.com.
FISKY
VTUBER
Fisky is a german VTuber catboy, uke with passion and loves cute fashion. In his streams and videos, which are usually in english language, he entertains and educates. Sometimes more, sometimes less serious. As a true catboy he works at a cat cafe daytime. He is also one of the main mascots at AiKon, a smol BoysLove & LGBT themed otaku convention in Germany.
DAISUKE SHINDOU
SEIYUU
Daisuke Shindou is a freelance Japanese voice actor (BL and otome) on DLsite GARUMANI and more. He has appeared in several audio works, including popular BL titles: "Drugged and Corrupted: Sex with a Beast Man" and "Virgin Noble Omega ~A Meeting With My Fated One, and Baby-making Sex~".
BLERDY OTOME
BLOGGER
Blerdy has been running the gaming site Blerdy Otome since 2015 and is an avid fan of otome games and boys love media. As a Black female gamer she strives to celebrate and spotlight inclusive developers and media that highlight the wonderfully diverse gaming community. She recently started streaming on Twitch and continues to use her platforms to create spaces for all people to feel comfortable being their most authentic selves.
THE YAOI SHELF
PODCAST
The Yaoi Shelf is a monthly podcast exploring all things BL and yaoi while discussing tropes, media criticism and more along the way. Guiding the ship(s) and stormy seas are two well-seasoned fujin who’ve seen it all.
thrill switch games
INDIE GAME DEVELOPER
Thrill Switch Games is a small indie game company formed by two very determined digital artists. Their goal is to bring LGBTQ+ content into different, darker genres of visual novels through compelling stories and beautiful artwork.
ACHIRU ET AL.
WEBTOON ARTIST
Achiru has been creating webcomics since 2002 and acts as the researcher, artist, writer, director and publisher of her own meta-physical comic production studio. Her characters, or "cast members" are implied in the "et al." They engage in various philosophical discussions, intimate conversations and play out hypothetical scenarios for social experiments, involving romance, chemistry, communication and gender.
ONLEY JAMES
M/M ROMANCE AUTHOR
Onley James lives in Central Florida with her daughter, her daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and a menagerie of animals, both good and evil. James splits her time between writing m/m romance and mainlining dangerous levels of caffeine and attempting to maintain her ever-slipping sanity. When not at her desk you can find her whining about how much writing she has to do, and avoiding said writing by binge-watching unhealthy amounts of television. She loves true crime documentaries, anti-heroes, obsessively scrolling social media and writing kinky, snarky books about morally gray men who fall in love with other men.
DR. KHURSTEN SANTOS
BL ACADEMIC
Kristine Michelle "Khursten" SANTOS is an assistant professor in the Department of History and the Japanese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University. As a cultural studies scholar and historian, her research examines women's queer and transnational transformative literacies that challenge norms in popular media. Her recent publications, "Queer Affective Literacies: Examining "Rotten" Women's Literacies in Japan" in Critical Arts (2020) and “The Bitches of Boys Love Comics: The Pornographic Response of Japan’s Rotten Women,” in Porn Studies (2020).
DR. THOMAS BAUDINETTE
BL ACADEMIC
Dr Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and International Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. Thomas’s research focuses on how pop culture informs knowledge about gender and sexuality across East and Southeast Asia. His first book is Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021). His second book is Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). He is currently investigating LGBTQ fans of K-pop with a particular focus on idol shipping thanks to generous funding from the Academy of Korean Studies.
DR. JAMES WELKER
BL ACADEMIC
James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kanagawa University. His research examines gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary Japan, with a focus on the lesbian community, radical feminism, and queer media consumption and production, as well as the global spread of Japanese media. He is an active author and editor of several academic books about manga, including Boys Love Manga and Beyond (Mississippi, 2015) and Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (Hawaii, 2022).
DR. BISHIE SENSEI
BL ACADEMIC
(Dr.) Bishie Sensei is a Japanese faculty member at an undisclosed university somewhere in the Western hemisphere. Through some horrible mistake that was never corrected, he received his Ph.D. focusing on Japanese popular culture and has since published multiple academic articles on BL, manga, and other otaku media. He has received numerous grants to conduct research and present his work across the globe, but he much prefers to work as a translator/interpreter/bishounen at major anime conventions, including Yaoi-Con, Anime Expo, and FanimeCon. This will be his third time at FujoCon, assisting with guests and hosting his popular panel, Learning Japanese with Yaoi.
DR. MILENA POPOVA
BL ACADEMIC
Milena Popova is a creative consultant, content creator, and activist. They did their PhD research in cultural studies on sexual consent in fanfiction and came away from that with a desire to build a consent culture in all areas of life. They do this through education, speaking, writing, cultural critique, and creative consultancy. Their books, Sexual Consent and Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, Consent are available from MIT Press.
Erica Friedman
Academic
Erica Friedman is the Founder of Yuricon and has run the world's oldest and most comprehensive blog, Okazu, since 2002. She has edited manga for JManga, Seven Seas and Udon Entertainment, most recently Riyoko Ikeda’s epic historical classic, The Rose of Versailles.
Erica is the author of By Your Side: The First 100 Year of Yuri Anime and Manga, out now from Journey Press.