dimitrea tokunbo

I’m a cartoonist, poet, researcher, and teacher. 

I earned my MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts, my BS in Art at SUNY Empire State College, and did some illustration coursework at Moore College of Art & Design. 

I have published children’s books with Tilbury House, Boyds Mills Press, and Scholastic Press, and created art for Harriet’s Apothecary, The Center for Anti-Violence Education, and The Brooklyn's Children's Museum. Before moving to the Bay Area, I raised two daughters in Brooklyn, NY.

My comics combine my love for the musicality of language, my fascination with history and my lifelong compulsion to draw pictures. 

I am currently working on a graphic hybrid memoir that blends a biography of the 18th century poet, Phillis Wheatley with my own journey as a book creator. 

Though separated by circumstance and nearly 200 years, I interweave these two narratives using personal and ancestral stories to examine how creative women find power and purpose despite systemic erasure.

Curriculum Vitae upon request.

photo credit: Bryon Lindsey