ND Stevenson
Stevenson's work has won multiple Eisner Awards as well as a Daytime Emmy Award and a GLAAD Media Award. Stevenson is non-binary and transmasculine, and has written about being transgender in his webcomic I'm Fine I'm Fine Just Understand.
Early life
Nate Diana Stevenson was born Noelle Diana Stevenson on December 31, 1991, in Columbia, South Carolina, to Diana and Hal Stevenson. He is the third of five siblings.
Stevenson was homeschooled before attending A.C. Flora High School. During his senior year, he created picture books and won a local award in the Visual Literacy Book Production category. In a 2023 interview, Stevenson mentioned Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002), The Lord of the Rings films, and Project Runway as influences in his childhood and adolescence.
Stevenson attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in 2013. While there, Stevenson gained fame as a fan artist under the name "gingerhaze" for his "hipster Lord of the Rings" characters.
Career
2012–2013: Nimona and career beginnings
During his junior year, he created his soon-to-be popular character Nimona as part of an assignment in one of his classes. In mid-2012, Stevenson began creating a webcomic around the character, also called Nimona, and soon signed with a literary agent who found the webcomic online. The agent helped him sign with HarperCollins to publish Nimona as a graphic novel. Nimona would double as Stevenson's senior thesis in 2012. For his work on Nimona, Stevenson won Slate Magazine's 2012 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of the Year and the 2016 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint. Stevenson was also named a 2015 National Book Award Finalist for the graphic novel version of Nimona. Stevenson said that the ability to create comics on his own and create Nimona was what got him a "writing job in animation," bringing him into the animation world.
While in school, Stevenson did freelance illustration for Random House, St. Martin's Press, and Label Magazine. In the summer of 2012, Stevenson interned at BOOM! Studios, a comic publishing house in Los Angeles. Stevenson created the cover art for Rainbow Rowell's novel Fangirl, which was published in 2013. He also worked with Ryan North on his book To Be or Not to Be (2013), a choose-your-own-adventure-book based on Shakespeare's Hamlet.
2013–2020: Lumberjanes, She-Ra and The Fire Never Goes Out
After his graduation in 2013, Stevenson returned to BOOM! Studios to help develop, and eventually write, Lumberjanes. Lumberjanes won Eisner Awards for Best New Series and Best Publication for Teens in 2015. In 2020, Stevenson was described as executive producer and writer of a one-hour animated special introducing the characters of Lumberjanes, an animated series which will stream on HBO Max. It was also announced that he would write and direct episodes for the main series, while serving an executive producer. He was also described as working on the series in 2021 and 2022. In a June 2023 interview, Stevenson noted he was "developing Lumberjanes" and "figuring out that world."
In 2015, Stevenson wrote for Marvel Comics on the comics Thor Annual and Runaways. He did the cover art for Jennifer Longo's novels Up to This Pointe (hardcover edition) and Six Feet Over It (paperback edition). Stevenson was part of the writing team of Disney's animated series Wander Over Yonder, beginning with the second season in 2015. In 2017, Stevenson appeared in two episodes of Critical Role's first campaign as Tova. He has subsequently appeared in three Critical Role one-shot episodes between 2017 and 2022 as himself, Tova, and Peter Pan. In June 2022, his character Tova was featured in a line of Critical Role miniatures by WizKids.
Stevenson was the creator and executive producer of DreamWorks Animation's rebooted She-Ra and the Princesses of Power animated television series on Netflix, which ran for five seasons from 2018 to 2020. She-Ra received critical acclaim, with particular praise for its diverse cast and the complex relationship between She-Ra and her best friend-turned-archenemy Catra. In 2019, the show was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming, as well as a Daytime Emmy Award at the 46th Daytime Emmy Awards. In 2021, the series was tied with First Day when it won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids and Family Programming. In 2023, Stevenson stated that he started playing Dungeons & Dragons when he started developing the series, and stated that his Tiefling warlock character would inspire Glimmer to have teleportation powers, and run out of power at "inconvenient moments" or go into situations without much thought. In a 2023 interview, Stevenson described She-Ra as the "most intensive job" he ever had, and said that once it ended, he "literally had nothing to do for the first time in my life."
His autobiographical collection of drawings and journals, The Fire Never Goes Out, was published in March 2020. The New Yorker's review described it as "a memoir of sorts ... , a coming-out story, a love story, a tale of disorientingly rapid professional triumph, and a story about mental health and illness, showing the young artist figuring out what [he] must do-first to make art and then to get well."
2021–present: Adaptations and other work
In October 2021, Stevenson started a Substack titled "I'm Fine I'm Fine Just Understand" which will explore topics such as mental health, gender identity, and more, with premium subscribers given access to comics which "reflect more personal/sensitive topics." In August 2022, the Substack was nominated for a Digital Book of the Year Harvey Award.
On February 4, 2022, Stevenson posted a fan comic of The Book of Boba Fett entitled "This Place Was Home" on Twitter, which received a positive critical reception. The Book of Boba Fett, which was later posted on Substack, features Boba Fett, Fennec Shand, Jango Fett, and Zam Wesell, with much of the comics focusing on "Boba's childhood relationship with Zam". In a later interview, Stevenson noted that at a young age, Wesell created a huge impression on him, noting he latched onto Zam because she was a shapeshifter, causing him to come up with a version of the story when Zam lived, "became the main character" in a "whole parallel world" that Stevenson constructed. This interest began his love of shapeshifters, which included "Carrie Kelley in the Batman comics." He also expressed his affinity for Wesell on various other occasions, even stating that Double Trouble in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is meant as an homage to Wesell. In a 2023 interview, Stevenson said that he gravitated toward Wesell, with the character causing him to want to see more about shapeshifting and "how far you could go with that".
In a June 2023 interview, Stevenson said he worked to ensure that Nimona was portrayed correctly in the animated film, as a character who was at the "heart of the story" rather than an "accessory", and enjoyed his work with the film's directors, Nick Bruno and Troy Quane. Stevenson also noted he was working on an unannounced "two book series of novels" based on stories predating Nimona, which were originally written in his teenage years. In an interview with TheGamer, Stevenson said that this project originated as a two-book series originally written when he was 12, influenced by Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, and was originally 600 pages long. He noted that he is trying to rewrite and illustrate the story, which TheGamer described as "queer and involv[ing]...pirates."
In November 2023, Out listed Stevenson as a "disruptor" who made the world "a better place for LGBTQ+ people." In an interview with the magazine, Stevenson said he was entering a "new creative phase" in his life amid "turbulence of late-stage capitalism". He added that "the world is so much bigger and weirder than we know — when you love someone for who they are, the understanding will follow." In another interview, he hoped for more epic romances and adventures with queer themes, noted that "queer stories also resonate with straight audiences," and argued that despite transphobia and homophobia in the U.S., there is a "little golden age of queer representation on TV" and hoped that creators broadened their imaginations to what is possible, rather than constraining themselves.
Personal life
Stevenson married fellow cartoonist Molly Knox Ostertag in September 2019. He began working on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power at the same time that he began dating Ostertag. He described her as influential on the show "from the very beginning"; Ostertag originated a major plot twist in the show's penultimate season.
In July 2020, Stevenson announced that he was "nonbinary, or something like it," and that he used any gender pronouns. In November 2020, Stevenson published a comic about his top surgery. On March 31, 2021, the International Transgender Day of Visibility, Stevenson stated that he is transmasculine and bigender.
In August 2021, Stevenson changed his first name to ND, as noted by CBR, Out, ComicsBeat, Xtra Magazine, and Bleeding Cool. In October 2021, Stevenson said that he was "becoming increasingly aware of the practical need for a new, less gendered [name] ... right now I don't really feel like I have one". On June 30, 2022, Stevenson announced he had chosen the name Nate, which he had been using privately since 2021, while being addressed as "ND Stevenson" professionally. Stevenson stated that his pronouns are he/him and he accepts "Indy" as a nickname.
On October 11, 2020, National Coming Out Day, Stevenson wrote and illustrated his coming out story for Oprah Magazine. He described his journey to self-acceptance, his "battle against the gender essentialism of [his] Evangelical upbringing", and stated that he had become an atheist by age 23.
In an August 2020 interview, Stevenson stated that he has bipolar disorder. In a February 2021 interview, he mentioned having ADHD and its impact on his work and life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bibliography
Graphic novels
- Nimona (HarperCollins, 2015)
Graphic non-fiction
- The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures (HarperCollins, 2020)
BOOM! Studios
- "The Sweater Bandit" (in Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake #1, January 2013, collected in Volume 1: Mathemagical Edition, tpb, 160 pages, 2013)
- "Desert Treasure" ( in Adventure Time 2013 Summer Special, July 2013)
- Lumberjanes #1–17 (April 2014–August 2015)
- Volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy (collects #1–4, writer with Grace Ellis and Gus A. Allen, tpb, 128 pages, 2015)
- Volume 2: Friendship to the Max (collects #5–8, writer with Grace Ellis and Gus A. Allen, tpb, 112 pages, 2015)
- Volume 3: A Terrible Plan (collects #9–12, writer with Shannon Watters and Carolyn Nowak, tpb, 112 pages, 2016)
- Volume 4: Out of Time (collects #14-17, writer with Shannon Watters and Gus A. Allen, tpb, 112 pages, 2016)
- Volume 5: Band Together (includes #13, writer with Shannon Watters and Gus A. Allen, tpb, 116 pages, 2016)
- Sleepy Hollow 4 #1–4 (4-issue limited series, backup stories, November 2014–January 2015)
- Sleepy Hollow: Volume 1 (tpb, 112 pages, 2015) collects:
- "Movie Night" (in #1, 2014)
- "At the Fair" (in #2, 4, 2014)
- "Shopping" (in #3, 2015)
- Sleepy Hollow: Volume 1 (tpb, 112 pages, 2015) collects:
Marvel Comics
- Runaways vol. 4 #1–4 (4-issue limited series, August–November 2015)
- Battleworld (tpb, 120 pages, 2015) collects:
- "Doomed Youth" (writer with Sanford Greene, in #1–4, 2015)
- Battleworld (tpb, 120 pages, 2015) collects:
- "Thor" (writer with Marguerite Sauvage, in Thor Annual #1, April 2015, collected in Volume 2: Who Holds the Hammer?, hc, 136 pages, 2015)
DC Comics
- "Wonder World" (artist with James Tynion IV, in Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman #23–24, February 2015, collected in Volume 2, tpb, 144 pages, 2015)
Filmography
Film
| Title | Year | Credited as | Role | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer | Producer | Actor | ||||
| Ron's Gone Wrong | 2021 | Yes | No | No | Additional Story Material | |
| Nimona | 2023 | Yes | Co-producer | Yes | Kwispy Dwagon (voice) | Additional Screenplay Material "Based on" credit |
Television
| Title | Year | Credited as | Role | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer | Executive Producer | Animation/Art department |
Actor | ||||
| Bravest Warriors | 2014 | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| Wander Over Yonder | 2015–2016 | Yes | No | Yes | No | Background painter | |
| Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure | 2017 | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures | 2017 | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| DuckTales | 2017 | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| Critical Role | 2017–2022 | — | No | No | Yes | Himself, Tova, Peter Pan | 5 episodes |
| Big Hero 6: The Series | 2018 | Yes | No | No | No | ||
| She-Ra and the Princesses of Power | 2018–2020 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Spinnerella (voice) | Creator; voice role in 8 episodes |
Episodic writing credits
| Title | Season | Episode | Name | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bravest Warriors | 2 | 9 | "The Dimension Garden" | ||
| Wander Over Yonder | 2 | ||||
| 2 | a | "The Big Day" | Story only | ||
| 4 | b | "The Axe" | |||
| 5 | a | "The Loose Screw" | |||
| b | "The It" | ||||
| 6 | a | "The Cool Guy" | |||
| b | "The Catastrophe" | ||||
| 7 | a | "The Rager" | Story only | ||
| b | "The Good Bad Guy" | ||||
| 8 | "The Battle Royale" | ||||
| 9 | a | "The Matchmaker" | |||
| b | "The New Toy" | ||||
| 10 | a | "The Black Cube" | |||
| b | "The Eye on the Skullship" | ||||
| 11 | a | "The Secret Planet" | |||
| b | "The Bad Hatter" | Story only | |||
| 12 | a | "The Hole...Lotta Nuthin'" | |||
| b | The Show Stopper" | ||||
| 13 | a | "The Cartoon" | |||
| b | "The Bot" | ||||
| 14 | a | "The Family Reunion" | Story only | ||
| b | "The Rival" | ||||
| 15 | "My Fair Hatey" | Story only | |||
| 16 | a | "The Legend" | |||
| b | "The Bad Neighbors" | ||||
| 17 | a | "The Party Poopers" | |||
| b | "The Waste of Time" | ||||
| 18 | a | "The Hot Shot" | |||
| b | "The Night Out" | ||||
| 19 | a | "The Search for Captain Tim" | Story only | ||
| b | "The Heebie Jeebies" | ||||
| 20 | a | "The Sick Day" | |||
| b | "The Sky Guy" | Story only | |||
| 21 | a | "The Robomechabotatron" | |||
| b | "The Flower" | ||||
| 22 | "The End of the Galaxy" | ||||
| Shorts | 1 | "The First Take" | |||
| 2 | "The Smile" | ||||
| 3 | "The Killjoy" | ||||
| 4 | "The Theme Song" | ||||
| 5 | "The Bathroom Break" | ||||
| 6 | "The Planetary Conqueror" | ||||
| Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure | 1 | 2 | "Rapunzel's Enemy" | Story only | |
| Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures | 2 | 4 | "The Embersteel Blade" | ||
| DuckTales | 1 | 1 | "Woo-oo!" | Story only | |
| 3 | "The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!" | ||||
| Big Hero 6: The Series | 1 | 5 | "Food Fight" | ||
| She-Ra and the Princesses of Power | 1 | 1 | "The Sword" (Part 1)" | ||
| 2 | "The Sword" (Part 2)" | ||||
| 3 | "Razz" | ||||
| 11 | "Promise" | ||||
| 13 | "The Battle of Bright Moon" | ||||
| 3 | 5 | "Remember" | |||
| 4 | 9 | "Hero" | |||
| 5 | 5 | "Save the Cat" | |||
| 13 | "Heart" (Part 2) | ||||
Awards and nominations
| Year | Organization | Award | Category | Work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Center for Cartoon Studies / Slate | Cartoonist Studio Prize | Best Web Comic of the Year | Nimona | Won | |
| 2015 | SFWA | Nebula Award | Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy | Nominated | ||
| 2015 | San Diego Comic-Con | Eisner Award | Best New Series | Lumberjanes | Won | |
| 2015 | San Diego Comic-Con | Eisner Award | Best Publication for Teens | Won | ||
| 2015 | San Diego Comic-Con | Eisner Award | Best Digital/Webcomic | Nimona | Nominated | |
| 2015 | National Book Foundation | National Book Award | Young People's Literature | Finalist | ||
| 2016 | Harvey Awards Executive Committee | Harvey Award | Best Original Graphic Publication for Young Readers | Lumberjanes | Won | |
| 2016 | GLAAD | GLAAD Media Award | Outstanding Comic Book | Won | ||
| 2016 | San Diego Comic-Con | Eisner Award | Best Graphic Album: Reprint | Nimona | Won | |
| 2022 | Harvey Awards Executive Committee | Harvey Award | Digital Book of the Year | I'm Fine I'm Fine Just Understand | Nominated |