Jacqueline C.J. Barnes is a graphic novelist and animator working within Black, disabled, and nerdy communities to create intersectional and accessible writing and art.

Love, inclusivity, and the fantastical are three words that best encapsulate Jacqueline’s work. PhantaNoir is a genre she created that places Black characters, cultures, and mythos, at the center of fantastical stories. It asks that we rethink the African past as inherently torrid and painful. It demands that we consider the cultures and mythos that have not been venerated, like the origin of Caribbean mermaids, voudun and hoodoo, and the Amazons of the Dahomey.

Jacqueline has a Bachelor of Art and Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Master’s from UCLA’s Animation workshop. She is a VONA 2017 Alum, was a resident at the 2017 Santa Fe Art Institute, an inaugural fellow at the Highlights foundation, and a CAC Individual artist grant awardee.

Presently, she is working on getting her Phantanoir graphic novel Anamnesis published.