The shortlist for one of the UK’s top literary awards, the Costas, is out and for the first time ever they have comics works included, with two graphic novels nominated in two of the five categories. Mary and Bryan Talbot’s superb Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes has made the shortlist for the Costa’s biography category, while Joff Winterhart’s Days of Bagnold Summer will compete against the prose works in the best novel category. Fantastic to see a major literary award being happy to include comics works, and in different categories too, which to me would indicate not just more acceptance of the medium beyond just those of us who love comics, but an understanding that the medium can tackle different subject matters and both the fiction and non-fiction to a standard deserving of recognition. It also explains why some of us got cryptic short messages from Bryan today alerting us to tune into the radio at a certain time this evening! Huge congrats to Mary, Bryan and Joff for flying our comics freak flag (and also to Jonathan Cape who publish both books) and well done Costa for being happy to accept a good book as a good book, regardless of being prose or graphical in nature. The Guardian has more on it here.
Tue, Nov 20, 2012
Awards, Books, Comics and cartoons