Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Angoulême, paul gravett, posy simmonds

Posy Simmonds, First Brit To Win The Grand Prix At Angoulême Festival

Posy Simmonds, comic creator and graphic novelist, has been awarded the Grand Prix at the International Comics festival in Angoulême.

Published Thu, 25 Jan 2024 04:53:08 -0600

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Thu, 25 Jan 2024 05:43:21 -0600

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Article Summary

Posy Simmonds wins Grand Prix at Angoulême, becoming first Brit and fourth woman.
Simmonds' career spans satirical Guardian strips to acclaimed graphic novels.
Her adaptation of French literary classics into graphic novels gained wide praise.
At 78, she continues to create, with a new project already simmering on the stove.

It is possible that having a Pompidou, Paris exhibition of her work helped. As well as having adapted a French classic novel into an English classic graphic novel (and movie). But it is an amazing jump for Posy Simmonds OBE, comic strip creator, illustrator and graphic novelist, to be awarded the Grand Prix at the International Comics festival in Angoulême. The first British comic book creator to have won the most prestigious prize in all of comics. The winner of the prize traditionally will act as the President of the Angoulême Festival for the following year. This year it is Riad Sattouf's position. Posy Simmonds will draw the poster for that show. Earlier this year, she also won the Sergio Aragonés International Comics Award.

I first encountered Posy Simmonds as a child with her strips in the Guardian newspaper, a satire on the North London left wing middle class who would prove so influential in British society in the decades that followed. But it was her move into serialising graphic novels in the Guardian, first Gemma Bovery, an adaptation and transposition of Madame Bovary, and then Tamara Drewe, her take on Far From the Madding Crowd, that won her the greatest plaudits. The Guardian ran out of money for her third book in this run, Cassandra Darke, about an artistic agent based on Ebeneezer Scrooge, but they did run a preview ahead of its publication as an original graphic novel. And they also put the story of her win on their front page today.

Posy Simmonds is only the fourth woman to win the prize, which has been running for 51 years, as well as being the first Brit – though it is understood that Alan Moore turned down an earlier nomination. She told the Guardian, "I always think in a perfect world, the gender of a prize winner shouldn't be remarkable. But it's an imperfect world and the comics and bande désinée world has always been a masculine milieu, a bit of a boys' club. But, bit by bit, especially over the last decade, women have infiltrated it, so I'm pleased to be one of them, of course." But at 78, she is not stopping yet. She tells the Guardian that she is working on a new project. "It's early stages, so it's in sketchbooks and I write little scenes … it's on the stove, being cooked, but I may be some time."

The exhibition Posy Simmonds: Dessiner la littératureis at the Bibliothèque Publique d'Information at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, until the first of April. Paul Gravett is co-curator. The Angoulême Comics Festival runs from today until the 28th.