Hello
My name is Nate Olison. I founded Optimist Comics in 2020 as an imprint to publish my comics through, but it's been through many permutations since then. Now I enjoy making, teaching, and talking about comics full-time! I'm a Chicago resident and a California native.
My Story
My teaching artist career started in 2010. I was living with my closest friends in a storefront that doubled as a performance venue. In my early 20s my only goals in life were to pay rent and put on the best poetry open mic possible. I was approached by a local non-profit to organize their regional high school poetry slam and given a list of high schools with suitable auditoriums. Long story short, in order to get access to those facilities, I promised to coach the school's poetry slam team for free. I coached the slam team at Westinghouse College Prep free of charge for 4 years, with zero resources, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with the work. There is nothing like being present the moment a young person realizes the power of their own voice. That team went on to be one of the perennial frontrunners of what was at the time, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, and I developed a passion for youth work that will never die.
My youth work saw many permutations, many of which weren't art-related at all. I've been fortunate enough to be a mentor, an advocate, a coach, and a confidant for hundreds of students across the Chicago landscape. I found a long-term home in the non-profit space by helping pioneer Pitch In, a dynamic social emotional learning program at the middle school level.
Optimist Comics is the culmination of all my work, my passion, my empathy, my skill and my ingenuity. It's a comprehensive package for what I have to offer the world. I know for a fact that art changes lives and that stories are the building blocks of society. What we are doing here is telling stories that matter, building bridges between people, and providing the tools for everybody else to do the same.