Anthony Oliveira

Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) is a multiple National Magazine and GLAAD award-winning author, film programmer, pop culture critic, and PhD living in Toronto. His work is in a myriad of genres, often incorporating queer themes, and spans comics, prose, journalism, and academic research. He is a recurring contributor to Marvel Comics (for which his work has won the 2020 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book and been nominated for the 2021 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel/Anthology). His other work has appeared in Hazlitt, The Washington Post, Xtra, Torontoist, Fangoria, StarTrek.com, Birth Movies Death, and others. He is a frequent TIFF red carpet host, CBC The National pop culture panelist, and a The Year in Movies Hollywood Suite guest expert. He appears in the queer YA film Erin's Guide to Kissing Girls (2023) as Bret, the beset comic book clerk. He is the weekly host of The Devil's Party, a podcast exploring the classics of Christian literature from a queer scholarly perspective. In prose, he is the five-time nominee and three-time winner of the National Magazine Awards - awarded gold once for his short story "Dayspring" (Best Fiction 2020), and twice for his work "Death in the Village" (Best Essay and Best Long-Form Feature 2019), which chronicles the aftermath of the Bruce McArthur murders. He has adjudicated both the 2019 Best Essay prize for Event Magazine and the Best Personal Journalism category for the 2020 National Magazine Awards. His first novel, Dayspring, based on this story, has been awarded a grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and is is forthcoming from Strange Light Press in 2023. For Marvel he is the writer of the Young Avengers: Paradox Lost miniseries, "Early Thaw," the story of Bobby Drake's first crush in Marvel Voices: Pride #1 (nominated for a 2021 GLAAD Media Award) and Wiccan & Hulkling: Last Annihilation (winner of the bronze for Best Graphic Novel 2021 at the Reads Rainbow Awards and named Best Comic 2021 by AIPT Comics), as well as the GLAAD Award-winning Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling (winner of AIPT Comics Best Comic Book of the Year and SyFy.Com's Best Comic of 2020), and "My Drag Brunch with Loki," a Wiccan & Hulkling short for the War of the Realms crossover event. His other graphic novel work includes "Act of Grace" for the 2022 Young Men in Love: A Queer Romance Anthology (winner of the 2023 Best Graphic Novel GLAAD Media Award); The Queer Guide to Comic Con for Dark Horse's Pros and Cons anthology; "Sunlight" for the Shout Out Anthology of Queer YA; and "When the Light Breaks" (the story of Steven Universe's first Pride Parade) for Cartoon Network's Steven Universe. His graphic novel, Apocrypha, about queer teens versus the Christian apocalypse, has been acquired by HarperTeen. He is also at work on his first novel, Dayspring, for which he has received the Ontario Arts Council grant, and which will be released by Strange Light Press in 2023. In addition to his own podcast, he is a frequent guest on Cerebro, Graphic Policy Radio, The Spouter-Inn, Mutant Watch, Slayerfest 98, Graymalkin Lane, A Year in Film, and Gayest Episode Ever. Working with Alex Koppel, in 2023 he also developed the app Oscaround, helping users keep track of their film viewing during Oscar season - what they've watched, what they loved, and what will win - and share with their friends. An award-winning teacher, his dissertation, "Exit the King: Sovereignty and Subjectivity in the Literature of the English Baroque," granted a PhD in 2017, examines the aesthetics of scientific, theological, and political breakdown in periods of social dis-cohesion and structural anxiety. Drawing into dialogue 17th century English literature (Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton), the 20th century post-war critics who helped theorize the continental Baroque movement's contours, and our own age's ascendant fascism and respondent Neo- and Counter-Baroque trends, it attempts to salvage the Baroque as an aesthetic and site of political resistance. During his degree and beyond, Oliveira also worked with the Glad Day Bookshop, the world's oldest surviving LGBTQ bookstore, as it became a multi-function queer event space, including drag bar, restaurant/diner and queer community hub in the heart of the village. He can be found on Twitter at @meakoopa, where he tweets about the arts, politics, and LGBT culture, or on his podcast, The Devil's Party, as he reads through the classics of Christian literature (including Milton's poetry and the Gospels) through a queer scholarly lens.