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Bryan Talbot, Neil Gaiman, and Joff Winterhart Awarded Fellowships of the Royal Society of Literature

Published Wed, 06 Jun 2018 16:30:06 -0500

On the 4th June, the Royal Society of Literature, founded in 1825 in London, announced the appointment of its new Fellows, including three graphic novelists, Bryan Talbot, Neil Gaiman and Joff Winterhart.

It's only the third year that any comics creators, let alone three of them, have been elected to be Fellows of the RSL, the first two being Posy Simmonds and Raymond Briggs.

Bryan Talbot is the creator of Luther Arkwright, Heart of Empire, Alice in Sunderland, and my favourite, Grandville. Neil Gaiman is the creator of Sandman, Stardust, Violent Cases, Death, and Mister Punch, among others. And Joff Winterhart is the creator of Days of the Bagnold Summer and Driving Short Distances.

The Society was founded in 1825. New Fellows sign the RSL roll book using TS Elliot's or George Elliot's fountain pen, or Lord Byron's dip pen. We understand Bryan went for the last…

The new RSL Fellows for 2018 are Mojisola Adebayo, Naomi Alderman, Julia Copus, Amanda Craig, Tim Dee, Julia Donaldson, Louise Doughty, Ken Follett, Neil Gaiman, Mohsin Hamid, Frances Hardinge, Anthony Horowitz, Philip Kerr, Nikita Lalwani, Nell Leyshon, Ben Markovits, Annalena McAfee, Eimear McBride, Pauline Melville, Charlotte Mendelson, David Morley, Neel Mukherjee, Pascale Petit, Adam Roberts, Polly Samson, Frances Stonor Saunders, Bryan Talbot, Louise Welsh, Roy Williams, Joff Winterhart and Andrea Wulf. The New RSL Honorary Fellows are Neil Astley, Nick Barley, Ruth Borthwick, Liz Calder, David Campbell, Colin Chisholm, Kwame Dawes, Peter Florence, Andrew Franklin, Barbara Hayes, Derek Johns, Roly Keating, Helena Kennedy, Jeremy Poynting, Dick Russell and Nathalie Teitler. This year's Benson Medallist, for exceptional contribution to literature, is Liz Calder.