Emily Carroll, Drew Friedman, Brandon Graham and Mimi Pond will make their Small Press Expo debuts, joining previously announced guests like Jules Feiffer, Lynda Barry and James Sturm at the Sept. 13-14 event in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Having Brandon, Emily, Drew and Mimi for the first time at SPX is a great thrill for both the SPX Executive Committee and the SPX community,” SPX Executive Director Warren Bernard told The Washington Post. “Their diverse styles and the mediums they work in really reflect the wide view that the SPX community has of the comics world. We are totally stoked about them coming to this year’s show."

As we noted just last week, it's been a particularly good year professionally for Carroll, who won both the Cartoonist Studio Prize and a Doug Wright Award. The first print collection of her fairy-tale horror comics, Through the Woods, will be released next month by McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

A celebrated cartoonist and caricaturist, Friedman is well known for his work for publications like The New York Times, Esquire and Rolling Stone, and for his Old Jewish Comedians series. His new book, Heroes of the Comics: Portraits of the Legends of Comic Books, will be released in August by Fantagraphics.

Graham, who made a splash with his own Multiple Warheads and King City, received acclaimed for his writing on the recent revival of Rob Liefleld's Prophet.

A veteran writer and cartoonist who worked on the first episode of The Simpsons, Pond made her graphic novel debut in April with Over Easy, from Drawn & Quarterly.

SPX organizers announced last week that the 20th-anniversary show will shine a spotlight on alt-weekly comics.