Posy Simmonds of Britain won the Grand Prix on Wednesday at the Angouleme comics festival in France. This is one of the most prestigious awards for graphic novelists in the world.

Despite being more well-known in Britain as a newspaper cartoonist, she is credited with creating the genre and has long delighted the world of graphic novels with her subtle yet spicy humor.

The Angouleme International Comics Festival, regarded as the most prestigious event in the industry, awarded her the top prize for her entire body of work, which includes several children's books and more adult works like "Tamara Drewe" and "Gemma Bovery," which are both humorous retellings of 19th-century novels.
Simmonds, 78, is a lifelong fan of France who attended the Sorbonne in Paris. Despite Britain's comparatively low appreciation of graphic novels, Simmonds chose to reside in the country.

She began her career as a press cartoonist for The Sun and eventually joined The Guardian, making her one of the few British women to make through in the field.

In 1981, Simmonds was recognized as the Press Cartoonist of the Year and received international recognition with her avant-garde graphic novel "True Love," which served as a sort of forerunner to the Bridget Jones books.

She stated, "We didn't yet call it a graphic novel," during an interview with the Pompidou Center in Paris for the exhibition that opened on April 1.

"I told myself I was going to write a romance... but my vision of love is quite ironic."

-Reinterpreting timeless works-

Growing up in the English countryside, Simmonds—whose full name is Rosemary Elizabeth—was surrounded by literature.

"Comics weren't really approved of at home, but my parents allowed them as long as we continued to read novels," she said.

Considered an iconoclastic masterwork, "Gemma Bovery" (1999) reimagines the bored heroine of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovery" with a convoluted storyline presented in a thick prose.

"Cassandra Darke" (2018) was a modern-day adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," while "Tamara Drewe" (2007) similarly moved Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd" to the present day.
Despite her insistence that graphic novels are a separate creative form, she is frequently treated as a literary writer by British reviewers.

She has long been a celebrity in France, one of the countries that consumes comics the most worldwide, and in 2017 she presided over the jury at the Angouleme festival.

A shortlist of three artists is compiled by other journalists and artists to choose the Grand Prix winner.

Catherine Meurisse of France made the shortlist for the sixth time but was not successful.

End//voice7news.tv