Overview
Nate Diana "Indy" Stevenson (born Noelle Diana Stevenson, December 31, 1991), known professionally as ND Stevenson, is an American cartoonist and animation producer. He is the developer, showrunner, and executive producer of the animated television series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which ran from 2018 to 2020. He is also known for the science fantasy graphic novel Nimona, as co-writer of the comic series Lumberjanes, and The Fire Never Goes Out, his autobiographical collection. 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 later described his family as "very religious" and said that he had a "very limited diet" as a result. At age 5 or 6, his first exposure to anime was the series Superbook, which he got from a church library, and said he found it "really scary...and a little bit traumatizing", and later said "yes" when another host said it sounded like the "Bible edition" of Drifters. 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. He later said that a public school teacher noticed his drive and ensured he met art school representatives, including one from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), the first time had "seriously considered going to school just for art," and later said something about Baltimore "felt right" for him. Stevenson attended MICA, graduating in 2013. He later credited various scholarships for making his education at MICA possible, and said he originally attended with the goal of being a children's book illustrator but through a "scheduling accident" he took a class about comics, which served as the birthplace of Nimona.
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. 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. 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 Runaways. He did the cover art for Jennifer Longo's novels Up to This Pointe (hardcover edition) and Six Feet Over It (paperback edition). 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 December 2025, ComicBook reported that She-Ra and the Princesses of Power series may leave Netflix on February 21, 2026, due to the expiration of DreamWorks' license to keep the series on the streaming service. Subsequent coverage by entertainment outlets, including Collider, ComicBook, and CBR, confirmed the removal. These reports highlighted the uncertainty regarding the series' future streaming availability and observed that frustrated fans were threatening to turn to online piracy to access the show.
On social media, Stevenson said that this news was not surprising, noting that the same has happened to other DreamWorks series as their Netflix licenses expiring, meaning that "years of hard work by many talented crews have ended up without a home," adding that showrunners have no control of it. He also expressed hope that the entire series would find "a new home," that the series would have a full DVD release, and urged fans to watch the series "while you can, and keep records whenever possible. Its legacy is in your hands."
2021–present: Adaptations and other work
In October 2021, Stevenson started a newsletter, titled "I'm Fine I'm Fine Just Understand", which explores 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 newsletter 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 to his newsletter, features Boba Fett, Fennec Shand, Jango Fett, and Zam Wesell, with much of the comics focusing on "Boba's childhood relationship with Zam". 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 November 2023, Out listed Stevenson as a "disruptor" who made the world "a better place for LGBTQ+ people." 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. 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 February 2025, the first part of the duology was officially announced as an illustrated middle-grade prose novel titled Scarlet Morning, published by Harper Collins in September 2025. On September 17, 2025, Stevenson told Comic Book Club that the animated adaptation of Lumberjanes had ended, noting adaptations of the comic went through "many iterations," saying certain issues, including corporate mergers, made working on it "untenable." He noted that the most recent adaptation is "sort of on ice," but opined that it is "a long way from dead" and that he is down to "keep playing with different iterations of it" with the possibility of a stage musical, an RPG, or something else, adding "those conversations are happening.
It's just there's nothing solid at this point." In April 2026, it was announced that Richland Library was, for National Library Week, releasing collectible library cards designed by Stevenson, which were available at each branch of the library. The cards originally debuted at a festival in March, and by April 22nd, 1,100 of these "special-edition cards" had been activated either online or in-person by library patrons.
Personal life
Stevenson married fellow cartoonist Lee 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 him 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. 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.
Graphic novels
* Nimona (HarperCollins, 2015)
Other fiction
* Scarlet Morning (HarperCollins, 2025)
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)
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) * "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)