826 alumna to exhibit her work at MoCCA

Past 826 Valencia student Emma T. Capps, age fourteen, will be exhibiting at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s annual “MoCCA Fest” in New York City on April 9 and 10, 2011. She will be selling her comic book Jam Days, which won a Gold Medal in the 2011 National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as other products from her weekly web comic The Chapel Chronicles. We couldn’t be more proud of Emma Capps’s beautiful, whimsical work, and we are beyond flattered that she has decided to donate all the profits from selling her products at MoCCA Fest to 826 Valencia. 

Capps took an 826 workshop several years ago taught by Dan Archer, who became her mentor. Archer teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Stanford University and has his own web comic, Archcomix. In May, Capps and Archer will be honored together at Carnegie Hall for the Scholastic Gold Medal awards.

For a year-long eighth-grade project, Capps chose to design and publish an entire line of greeting cards and gifts, including postage stamps and magnets, based on The Chapel Chronicles. Most of her cards have funny lines from the titular Chapel, a “zany eleven-year-old girl…with red ponytails, granny glasses, a little black dress, and freakishly long feet.” You can check out all her comics and greeting cards at www.chapelchronicles.com.

We cannot say enough great things about Emma Capps’s work, and we are so proud that she has had so much success with her comics and writing. All of us here at 826 Valencia want to say to Emma: Congratulations and thank you!