Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy® nominated and multi award winning animation and documentary filmmaker, as well as an acclaimed author and illustrator. After graduating from the Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation, he founded Vancouver-based boutique animation studio and publishing company Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in 2001. Jeff’s short and feature length films, including Yellow Sticky Notes (2007), One Big Hapa Family (2010) and Mixed Match (2016), have broadcast around the world, screened in hundreds of international film festivals and garnered dozens of awards. Being Yonsei, fourth generation Japanese Canadian, and having mixed Japanese and European roots, Jeff’s work often deals with themes of multiethnic identity. He coined the term Hapanimation to describe his style of blending anime and manga with a North American cartoon aesthetic. He has lectured and presented his films at over one hundred universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale. In 2018, he wrote and illustrated his first picture book Mixed Critters, an ABC book inspired by his own children’s mixed Japanese backgrounds. Nori and His Delicious Dreams (2020), Jeff’s second children’s book, features a Japanese Canadian boy named Nori who dreams of sleeping in foods from around the world. In 2021, Jeff collaborated with Sansei artist Lillian Yano Blakey to create best-selling graphic novel On Being Yukiko. Jeff will be releasing his second graphic novel, Tomie: The Unyielding Spirit of Tomekichi Homma in 2025. He is currently writing and illustrating his next graphic novel Ojiichan’s Dragon, a fantasy based story that takes place in an internment camp in New Denver during WWII.