Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, the annual comics festival that was co-founded by comics journalist and advocate Tom Spurgeon, has announced the recipient of this year’s Spurgeon Award.
Annie Koyama, the publisher of the well-regarded (and now defunct) Koyama Press and the curator of the Koyama Provides grant program, will receive the award during this year’s festival in Columbus, Ohio. Koyama Provides awards mini-grants to independent artists, providing them with funding to complete projects or start new ones.
Koyama received the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award in 2022, and at the time Comic-Con International said she had given out around $300,000 in grants. You can see many of the recipients on Koyama’s Instagram account, where she spotlights their work.
“I’m thrilled to have been chosen as the 2024 recipient of the Tom Spurgeon Award,” Koyama said. “I’m thankful to have found a way to stay connected to a community that I love, by directly supporting artists, especially cartoonists. Tom reached out to me in the early days of the press, when I had seemingly come out of nowhere and he continued to support the press and my plans beyond the press, for which I’ll always be grateful.”
The Spurgeon Award, which CXC has given out since 2021, honors those who “have made substantial contributions to the field of comics, but are not primarily cartoonists.” It honors Spurgeon, who ran the award-winning The Comics Reporter website until his death in 2019.
Koyama joins a list of previous recipients that includes Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly, translator and manga scholar Frederik L. Schodt, Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News syndicate vice-president and director Mollie Slott, All-Negro Comics founder and publisher Orrin Evans, and Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson.
“Annie Koyama is a beacon in the world of independent comics,” said Caitlin McGurk, CXC Awards Committee Chair. “Through her unwavering efforts to uplift the voices of a diverse network of cartoonists, she quickly established herself as a fairy godmother-like figure in the community—and one with impeccable taste. Koyama serves as a model of excellence for how to make a lasting impact in the lives of creators, and we are thrilled to honor her with this award.”
This year’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus will take place Sept. 26-29 and will feature guests like Kate Beaton, Jerry Craft, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Ben Passmore, Nate Powell and many more.
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