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Inclusiveness and representation is very much on the radar of the comic industry right now, yet this panel is not simply the next discussion of this topic as relates to women. Rather it’s been convened in response to ‘the Angouleme controversy’. We’re helpful primed on entrance to the LBF by the Bookseller Daily, which includes Tom Tivnan’s interview with Emma Hayley – MD of Self Made hero – who is chairing the panel. |
‘A case study in how to balls up a book festival,’ says Tom of January’s Angouleme International Comics Festival (not the LBF!) It’s a perfectly apt description. Of 30 comic creators on the longlist for Angouleme’s Grand Prix lifetime achievement award not one was a woman. A boycott was roundly called for and supported: Male creators withdrew and it was hardly an appealing prospect for the hurriedly added women creators. Nor would it have helped that the festival director’s response was “There are not many women in the history of comics”(!) |
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So Emma chairs the panel which is made up of Myriad Editions MD Corinne Pearlman, Mediatoon International Rights Director Sophie Castille, freelance author Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveller’s Wife), and comics creator Hannah Berry (Britten & Brülightly, Adamtine, Livestock). Read the rest of this entry »