Britain's First Graphic Novel Award returns!

UK competitors The First Graphic Novel Award is returning with a brand new identify, new companions and a brand new brand after a quick hiatus. Editor Corinne Pearlman will proceed the award, with writer SelfMadeHero, London’s Cartoon Museum, and literary administration firm The bks Agency. Winners shall be provided a publishing contract from SelfMadeHero and a £500 money prize sponsored by the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. Other companions of the award embody former publishing accomplice Myriad Editions, UK comics occasions Lakes International Comic Art Festival and Thought Bubble, and the LDComics community.

The competitors has been an important a part of the British graphic novel panorama, serving to to advertise new voices within the longer type of the medium. Formerly referred to as the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, it started in 2012 and was spearheaded by Myriad Editions’ then-creative director Corinne Pearlman. It place each two years. Previous winners have included Gareth Brookes‘ The Black Project (printed in 2012), Jade Sarson‘s For The Love of God, Marie! (printed 2014), and Jenny Robins‘ Biscuits (printed 2018). The final version of the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition was in 2020, the successful title was Veronika Muchitsch Cyberman, which was printed in 2022. Many different shortlisted authors found by way of the competitors had been additionally printed by Myriad – similar to Hannah Eaton with Naming Monsters (2013), Zara Slattery‘s Coma (2021), and Sabba Khan‘s The Roles We Play (2021 – and rereleased within the US as What Is Home, Mum? with Street Noise Books in 2022).

Submissions of a 15-30 web page extract of the work-in-progress are actually open, with the window closing September 14, 2023. [Note: There is, however, a small administrative fee for entrants of £10 – or £5 for students and those on benefits]. Those that make the longlist and shortlist shall be contacted by way of e-mail in late September and November, respectively, and the winner declared at an award ceremony on December 7, 2023.

The SelfMadeHero contract to the winner will embody an advance in opposition to royalties plus editorial and design assist to carry the work-in-progress undertaking to publication. Longlisted work shall be displayed at this yr’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Bowness-on-Windermere, September 29 to October 1, and shortlisted work displayed on the Thought Bubble Festival in Harrogate, November 10-12.

There is not any age standards however all contributors (be they single authors or a artistic group) have to be residents of the UK, not have an agent, and never beforehand had a full-length work commercially printed. It will be fiction or nonfiction.

According to the web site:

“We are looking for a wide range of creators from different regions within the UK, and with different backgrounds. We want to reflect our society, inclusive of neurodivergent and disabled people, and those with the full rainbow of social, gender and ethnic identities.”

The judges for the newly reformed First Graphic Novel Award will embody editors Ayoola Solarin and Corinne Pearlman, artist Mark Wallinger, the London Cartoon Museum’s Learning & Outreach Officer Steve Marchant, comics journalist and educational Alex Fitch, and graphic novelist – one of many competitors’s printed shortlisted authors – Sabba Khan. According to the competitors web site, creators that make the longlist could have their work reviewed by literary agent James Spackman of The bks Agency. All longlisted and shortlisted work will obtain suggestions from the judges.