Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« Broadway Haunts May Be Demolished f… | Shorter Paul Krugman »

Friday, January 16, 2009

Books A Book Award I Can Get Behind

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 1:02 PM

25f0/1232138545-chubbycheeks_.jpg
I don't pay a whole lot of attention to book awards (the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association gave out their book awards a week ago and I forgot to put the results up, probably because I didn't care and I didn't think anybody else cared, either. PNBA obviously doesn't care that much, because their website still hasn't listed the winners of the 2009 awards.) But I do pay attention to the winners of the Xeric Foundation Grant.

The Xeric Grant was created by Peter Laird (the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and an alumnus of my alma mater, Bonny Eagle High School in Standish, Maine) as a way to help self-published comics artists. Former Xeric winners include Adrian Tomine and Jason Lutes. It's been a great benefit to the comics world and a great way for young creators to get started on their careers. The awards almost never exceed 5,000 dollars, but over 2 million dollars have been given away in the nearly two decades of the award's existence.

Winners this time around include Box Brown, who has two panels represented above, Ed Choy Moorman, who did this great biographical strip about Jim Henson (and has many more comics readable online here), Annie Murray, who does Fleeneresque comics, and many more. I have read some Xeric-funded comics that I didn't like, but I have never read a Xeric-funded comic that wasn't interesting. If there's a literary grant with this kind of a track record, I've yet to discover it.

Comments (1) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Hi Paul! I'm one of this year's Xeric winners, so I hope you'll check my book "Old Man Winter & Other Sordid Tales out. It should be out in the spring of 2009, so let me know if you'd like a reviewer copy. For now, you can find images & such at http://www.BirdcageBottomBooks or read the first chapter at http://www.jtyost.com

Keep up the good work!

J.T. Yost

Posted by J.T. Yost on January 19, 2009 at 5:35 PM