tina chu (pronouns: she/her) is a Taipei-born, Mississauga-raised illustrator, currently living in Toronto. She fell in love with illustration as a grade schooler via her colourful Mandarin textbooks and decided to pursue it later in life.

Tina’s meandering path to illustration means she also had the opportunity to develop as a learning experience designer, her daytime hat of choice. To date, Tina is most known for her collaboration with the American Porphyrias Foundation and the resulting online comic, Shadow Jumpers, which was updated and republished  in 2023. Independently, Tina is also known for her zine, Do You Have a Cervix? which was nominated for a Broken Pencil Infozine Award in 2020.

On any given day, Tina can be found dreaming up comic-based zines to share and unpack daily experiences and today’s sociopolitical context, as well as struggling at the gym to slowly build up her strength–so she can drag her loved ones out of a burning building, just in case!

madcrush is named for silly comics tina used to regularly snail-mail to friends detailing her crushes of the day.