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.
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. While there, Stevenson gained fame as a fan artist under the name "gingerhaze" for his "hipster Lord of the Rings" characters. 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. For his work on Nimona, Stevenson won Slate Magazine's 2012 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of the Year and the 2016 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint. Stevenson was also named a 2015 National Book Award Finalist for the graphic novel version of Nimona. Stevenson said that the ability to create comics on his own and create Nimona was what got him a "writing job in animation," bringing him into the animation world.
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. Stevenson created the cover art for Rainbow Rowell's novel Fangirl, which was published in 2013. 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 2022. In a June 2023 interview, Stevenson noted he was "developing Lumberjanes" and "figuring out that world."
In 2015, Stevenson wrote for Marvel Comics on the comics Thor Annual 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). Stevenson was part of the writing team of Disney's animated series Wander Over Yonder, beginning with the second season in 2015. 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 a 2023 interview, Stevenson described She-Ra as the "most intensive job" he ever had, and said that once it ended, he "literally had nothing to do for the first time in my life."
His autobiographical collection of drawings and journals, The Fire Never Goes Out, was published in March 2020. The New Yorker's review described it as "a memoir of sorts ... , a coming-out story, a love story, a tale of disorientingly rapid professional triumph, and a story about mental health and illness, showing the young artist figuring out what [he] must do-first to make art and then to get well."
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.