London-based Rebecca K Jones’ entry Midnight Feast, a four-page story about younger associates on the cusp of change tenting out on the garden, has been awarded the Observer/Faber Graphic Short Story Prize 2022. Runners-up for the prize had been Ed Firth’s The Lift, and Michael Lightfoot’s Autumn 2014.
I used to be completely surprised and thrilled to have received the this 12 months’s Faber / Observer / Comica Graphic Short Story prize!
You can learn my entry and the joint runners up too. I used to be so comfortable to see the sensible Ed Firth @furrealist was one in every of them. https://t.co/KUqKSPM8FC
— rebeccakjones (@rebeccakjones1) November 20, 2022
On successful the Graphic Short Story Prize 2022 award – after reportedly seven makes an attempt – Rebecca Jones mentioned to the Guardian/Observer:
“I’m so thrilled to win. It’s honestly a dream come true. To have such a platform, to be published in a national newspaper. It’s the biggest break I could have. I was in a state of shock when I got the call.”
The preliminary concept for Midnight Feast got here out of a month-to-month on-line Drink & Draw occasion co-run by Broken Frontier and (London’s high LCS) GOSH! Comics (they used to be held in-person pre-pandemic).
“Three guest artists choose a theme and then everyone has 30 minutes to respond to it. When I was thinking about the prize, I looked back through some of the drawings I’d done for it, and found one I’d made of two girls in a tent when the theme was ‘midnight feast’. I thought I might be able expand on that a bit.”
Expanding on the themes within the prizewinning piece:
“It’s a bit autobiographical. I did have a sleepover in someone’s garden when I was young, but while we had a perfectly normal evening compared with the characters in my story, I also remember that at 12 or 13 we had very lively imaginations: we would be convinced that coins were haunted, or that there were strange shadows in the park. The girls in Midnight Feast are like that, but they’re also developing at different rates, and experimenting with things they don’t quite understand.”
According to the article spotlighting her win, Jones works in college administration and holds two arts levels – together with an MA in illustration. She attracts, self-publishes, and sells her personal work at comics festivals and festivals up and down the nation in no matter time she has out there – together with at Thought Bubble, the biggest highlight on comics throughout the UK. Her listed creative influences embody Tove Jansson, Posy Simmonds, Marjane Satrapi, Matthew Dooley and Emily Haworth-Booth (the latter two being former Graphic Short Story Prize winners).
Off the again of the prize, Jones goals to discover a residence for her graphic novel venture Boomerang, in regards to the ‘Boomerang generation’ and youth unemployment. It was beforehand shortlisted for the 2018 Laydeez Do Comics Prize for in-progress graphic novels. She has up to now been self-publishing the e-book in instalments.
The judges for the Observer/Faber Graphic Short Story Prize 2022 included Adrian Tomine; Faber publishing director Angus Cargill, comics knowledgeable Paul Gravett; GOSH! Comics and Breakdown Press co-founder Tom Oldham; Observer journalist Rachel Cooke; and actor Michael Sheen.
“[A]lmost 200 entries” had been submitted to this 12 months’s prize. Reportedly the judges had been evenly break up this 12 months on the runner up and so two had been awarded – Ed Firth’s The Lift and Michael Lightfoot’s Autumn 2014.
The Observer is joined this 12 months by writer Faber to co-sponsor the award. First prize awardee receives £1000 and their wining four-page comedian revealed – in print – within the Observer newspaper’s New Review and on the Guardian web site. Runners up obtain £250 and their work on the Guardian web site.
The Observer’s Graphic Short Story Prize has been operating since 2007. Last 12 months the Graphic Short Story Prize went to Astrid Goldsmith’s A Funeral in Freiberg.
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