Corban Wilkin

On Monday I had the immense honour of being invited to Waterstones Piccadilly to speak alongside the six other shortlisters for the First Graphic Novel Award on a panel hosted by the inimitable Alex Fitch of Panel Borders, who asked us some pretty challenging and revealing questions about our shortlisted graphic novels.

The insights my fellow shortlisters gave about their books showed how deeply and carefully they have thought about their work and proved once again the wealth of talented, intelligent people who are putting immense amounts of their own time and effort into this complex artform.

After the creators spoke, the seven judges for the award spoke each in turn about one entrant’s work. My entry, The Infinite Benefits of Shame, was addressed with the most incredible care and detail by Ayoola Solarin, for whose words of understanding I am more grateful than I could have imagined.

The award was given to Bone Broth, by the amazingly talented Alex Taylor (azbtart), with whose precocious artistic skill I’ve no doubt will produce a finished book more than worthy of this award. However, I think I speak for all of us when I say that as the seven shortlisters, we were just very lucky to be up there out of 170 entrants to the award.

As I grow older, and especially after hearing the kind and thoughtful words of the judges and other entrants, I’m realising more and more that the point of all this is not selling a book or winning an award: the point is to communicate. I’ve written recently in this journal about how I’m not always as good at meeting and getting to know people as much as I wish I could be. The only reason I write and draw is out of a kind of yearning to communicate, to articulate something that I am trying to understand about myself. I’ve always hoped that by finding a way to share this stuff, there would be people who would be able to read it and feel understood.

All my most profound experiences of art have involved the feeling of being totally understood by the author or artist whose work I’m experiencing. To see articulated by total strangers, in words or images, your own deepest feelings, things which you have not even understood yourself, is the pure magic of art. Our favourite artists seem to understand us more than the people we see every day. And to know that artists sacrifice everything to journey into their own underworld to find this understanding and offer it to the world is what drives me to continue trying my best to do the same.

Gaining a deeper insight into my own motivations for doing this, and experiencing the validation of being championed as one of the final seven, is a reward as great as any win, and I can only humbly thank you all one last time for the work of putting it together.

Thank you Corinne Pearlman, without whom the award would not exist; Emma Hayley, who has invited me along to many cool things over the years; Sabba Khan, who welcomed me so warmly to the event; Mark Wallinger: an unbelievable privilege to have him reading our work; Steve Marchant, who has already taught me and many others so much; Alex Fitch, for his world-class panel-hosting skills; and once again Ayoola Solarin for her support for my entry, which means everything.

Also thank you to James Spackman and the BKS agency, the ALCS, The Cartoon Museum, SelfMadeHero, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, and to Waterstones for hosting the event! This is all so much more than I deserve and I can’t really express how grateful how I feel. And congratulations once more to the star of the event, Alex Taylor!

The event was a blur of nerves and excitement, but fortunately you can watch the whole thing on Vimeo.