Riad Sattouf named Grand Prix winner at 50th annual Angoulême

The creator of ‘The Arab of the Future’ wins the French festival’s biggest prize.

Riad Sattouf, the creator of The Arab of the Future and Esther’s Notebook, has won this year’s Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

The 44-year-old French cartoonist, who has also directed feature films, was quoted as saying “I am deeply honored and moved. It’s the centerpiece that was missing at the top of my ego pyramid” upon accepting the award.

Sattouf is best known for The Arab of the Future, or L’Arabe du Futur, his six-book collection about growing up in Libya and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s. Four of them have been released in the United States. He’s also a former contributor to France’s satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and is the creator of the Esther’s Notebooks comic strip, a collection of which was released this month in the United States.

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Three women nominated for Grand Prix d’Angouleme

Penelope Bagieu, Julie Doucet, and Catherine Meurisse are on the shortlist for the prestigious lifetime award.

For the first time ever, the final nominees for the Grand Prix d’Angouleme are all women. Pénélope Bagieu, Julie Doucet, and Catherine Meurisse were chosen by a jury of their peers—literally: All comics creators whose work is published in France are eligible to vote for the nominees.

The winner will be announced on March 16.

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Guibert named Grand Prix winner as Angouleme Festival opens

Robert Kirkman, Catherine Meurisse and Chris Ware also recognized as the festival kicks off.

The Angoulême international comics festival (a.k.a. FIBD Angoulême) opened yesterday with the announcement that French writer Emmanuel Guibert had been awarded this year’s Grand Prix. Guibert is a frequent collaborator of Joann Sfar; the two worked together on The Professor’s Daughter and the Sardine in Space series, and he is also the writer of The Photographer, Alan’s War, and the children’s series Ariol (this last is published in English by Papercutz, while all the others are published here by First Second).

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