Miami. Supah Dank.

These Black men and women make history today. They remind everybody what it means to be young, gifted and unapologetically Black. These young Black talents faced discrimination and bullying in their way to success and now they have become an inspiration to us. 

Follow their stories every day over the Black History Month.

WHAT IS IT? Creators for Creators is an independent 501©(3) non-profit organization intended to encourage, support, and promote original works through grants and education.

The goal of the Creators for Creators grant is to help pave the way for the next generation of comics creators by supporting their work financially and through mentorship, as well as providing opportunities for their creations to reach a wide audience. We plan to give $30,000 to a single cartoonist or writer/artist duo in order to support the creation of a new and original work of a length between sixty-four and one hundred pages over the course of a single year. The recipient will be selected by committee according to rigorous criteria.

In addition to the monetary support, the recipient of the grant will have access to mentorship from the experienced creators involved with Creators for Creators. Mentorship will cover almost every aspect of the comic-creating experience. The goal is to give the recipient a firm foundation in the creative, business, legal, and financial areas of the comics business.

The recipient has total control over how and where they choose to publish their work once it is completed, whether they choose to submit it to a creator-owned publisher or release it themselves in any format. Iron Circus Comics and Image Comics have both pledged to support the recipient by publishing their work, if the recipient so chooses. No matter their choice, the recipient retains all rights to their work.

Finally, CreatorsforCreators.org will become a resource for the comics industry intended to educate creators by way of testimonials, advice, and more from established creators.

The Creators for Creators grant was founded by Charlie Adlard, Jordie Bellaire, David Brothers, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Nick Dragotta, Leila del Duca, Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Jonathan Hickman, Joe Keatinge, Robert Kirkman, Jamie McKelvie, Rick Remender, Declan Shalvey, Fiona Staples, Eric Stephenson, C. Spike Trotman, and Brian K. Vaughan.

CAN I APPLY? Applicants must either be a single creator or a writer-artist duo with joint ownership of the submitted work. Each applicant must be eighteen years old or older, and the work cannot have been submitted to a publishing company or similar entity within the past year. The Creators for Creators grant is international, so there are no geographic restrictions on applicants.

Applicants must have never had solo work published by a third-party publisher. Self-published work is acceptable, as is participation in anthologies, but any non-anthology industry publication is unacceptable.

HOW DO I APPLY? Visit CreatorsforCreators.org to view the submissions page. All applications must include a signed release agreement and bio for each applicant, a proposal of no more than two pages that roughly describes your story and its conclusion, and at least five pages of finished sequential art from your story in order to demonstrate your storytelling.

The submission period lasts from May 1st, 2016 to November 1, 2016, and the eventual recipient of the grant will be chosen by an anonymous selection committee.