Anna Readman’s DANCING QUEEN wins Observer/Faber Graphic Short Story Prize 2023

By unanimous determination, Anna Readman’s comedian Dancing Queen has been named because the 2023 winner of Comica, Faber and The Observer newspaper’s annual Graphic Short Story Prize. A primary-time entrant to the competitors, Readman obtained £1,000 and her four-page brief printed in Britain’s Observer newspaper and on the Guardian web site. Runner-up Candy Gourlay’s Safe Passage obtained a prize of £250 and the comedian featured on the Guardian web site.

Readman’s Dancing Queen, a fictional rumination on a departed good friend based mostly on actual life loss, was picked because the excellent candidate for this yr’s Graphic Short Story Prize. All judges unanimously deciding on it in a yr of entrants that have been largely on the lighter aspect. According to Observer choose, journalist and critic Rachel Cooke,

“We all agreed that Readman’s story deserved to be our winner, even if we were slightly surprised by our decision (its edgy gloom stood in stark contrast to the sweetness of a lot of this year’s entries, so many of which were about beloved pets, and even beloved cuddly toys).”

Cooke additionally described the attraction of Dancing Queen,

“Readman’s story…has a dark, Charles Burns-style mood. Its characters’ eyes cannot always be seen; an old VW camper van morphs into a hearse; a fairytale castle looms improbably over a small town.”

The judges for this yr’s competitors – which has been an annual occasion since 2007 – included Rachel Cooke; Faber publishing director Angus Cargill; Comica director and comics connoisseur Paul Gravett, London’s GOSH! Comics store supervisor and Breakdown Press editor in chief Tom Oldham; creator Max Porter; and illustrator/graphic novelist Lizzy Stewart (Alison, It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be, Walking Distance).

Anna Readman is a 2020 graduate in Illustration from Leeds Arts University. Originally from Sussex, she works as a full time illustrator and cartoonist from her dwelling studio in Leeds, UK. She has produced a lot of self-published comics and labored for British weekly anthology 2000 AD and contributed to the Graham Coxon: Superstate anthology printed by Z2 in 2021. In 2019 she was named by Broken Frontier – a publication with its finger on the heart beat of British small press – as one in all its Six to Watch and the “future of British comics”. Readman describes her influences as together with Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and Seth and solely entered the Graphic Short Story Prize for the primary time this yr on the behest of her mom, a subscriber of the Observer newspaper.

In interview with Cooke, Readman stated in regards to the inspiration behind the melancholy of Dancing Queen:

“Eight years ago, my friend Annie died suddenly from an undiagnosed heart condition. It was the month before she turned 18. Dancing Queen had been in my head for a while because people around me are beginning to settle down now, and this has made me reflect on where she’d be, and what she’d be doing, and on how the fact she isn’t around contrasts with my own life, and what I’m doing.”

London-based Filipino creator Candy Gourlay’s brief comedian Safe Passage was runner up for the Graphic Short Story Prize 2023. The established kids’s guide creator, 61, had already skilled success in her discipline by profitable the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Book Prize however used the competitors as a automobile to develop her ability set to comics. Telling Rachel Cooke,

“When I finished my latest passion project last year [Wild Song], I suddenly felt aware of a clock ticking. I’m 61. Time is running out. I decided that this year would be all about comics, and so I drew Safe Passage, which is based on a story about ant hills and magic and superstition that my father told us – he was eight when the war broke out, and his mother fled the Japanese with all of her children – but which is really about fear of the unknown.”

She stated in regards to the expertise of crafting comics in comparison with being a novelist and making it as a runner up:

“I feel very lucky to be… a usurper. When I am writing novels, I start the day with dread. Will I find the right words? It’s so much responsibility. But when I’m drawing comics… Every morning now, I feel this joy!”

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