Raina Telgemeier, Daniel Clowes, and Evan Salazar honored at festival with Calvin Reid
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus has named the winners of awards that honor established creators and newcomers. The awards were part of the annual CXC festival that ran Sept. 27 to Oct. 1 at venues across Columbus, drawing thousands of guests and creators to the city.
Raina Telgemeier, the cartoonist whose graphic novel Smile helped to define a category of comics for young readers, won the Transformative Work Award.
“With Smile, Raina Telgemeier changed the comics industry in wonderful ways,” said Shena Wolf, former director of comics development at Andrews McMeel Universal and a CXC Awards Committee member. “She made a deeply personal book that resonated to such a degree that its success shifted the way we talked about comics. Smile showed people who hadn’t seen themselves in comics (as subjects or creators) that yes, comics were for them. Comics are for everybody. It widened the lens of comics (as understood by the general public), and did it with craft, humor, and heart. There is no question that this is a transformative work, and Raina Telgemeier is incredibly deserving of this award.”
Daniel Clowes, the groundbreaking alternative cartoonist whose works include Ghost World and Monica, won the Master Cartoonist Award.
Daniel Clowes, winner of the Master Cartoonist Award and Jenny Robb, Curator and Associate Professor at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
Photo by Raylavoie.com
“Daniel Clowes is an artist that has helped to shape generations, reframing modern aesthetics and classic narratives with a technical prowess that was only matched by a boundless sense of humor,” said CM Campbell, a cartoonist and member of the Awards Committee. “As a storyteller Daniel Clowes reveals a special kind of truth. His work is frank in its framing of a subjective reality, a master in the craft of sharing his distinct point of view.”
Evan Salazar won the Newly Emerging Talent Award for works that include his self-published Rodeo, an anthology with memorable characters and a distinctive style.
Evan Salazar, winner of the CXC 2023 Emerging Talent Prize and
Lucy Shelton Caswell, co-founder of CXC, Founding Curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Photo by Raylavoie.com
“Using a narrative style that was familiar, yet strange, Evan is creating comics that make me curious about what will happen next,” said Chris Pitzer, former publisher of AdHouse Books and a member of the Awards Committee. “His talent for world-building is pretty exceptional.”
The emerging talent award comes with a no-strings-attached $7,500 prize provided by Cartoon Books.
In addition to those three awards announced at the festival, CXC’s organizers also presented the previously announced Tom Spurgeon Award to Calvin Reid, the writer and editor. The Spurgeon Award honors those who have made substantial contributions to the field of comics, but are not primarily cartoonists.
“Calvin was one of the very first grown ups to get that comics are an art form, not a genre; they are a medium of literature,” says Vijaya Iyer, Cartoon Books publisher and CXC co-founder, “It took a pivotal figure like Calvin Reid to not only recognize the value of comics and graphic novels, but to use his position as a writer at the most important book trade magazine, Publishers Weekly, to shout it from the mountain top!”
A list of previous CXC award winners can be found on the festival’s website.
