The Giller Power Panel: Graphic Novels Take Centre Stage

March 14, 2021

March 14, 2021 (Toronto, ON) – Elana Rabinovitch, Executive Director of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is thrilled to announce that the third Giller Prize Power Panel will take place on Monday, April 19, at 7 p.m. EDT and will celebrate the art of graphic novels.

The panel will explore the art and culture of graphic novels as well as dive into what has made them so popular in the last decade.

Moderated by the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner, Michael Redhill, the group will feature the following Canadian graphic novelists: Johnnie Christmas, Meags Fitzgerald, Lorina Mapa and Seth.

Johnnie Christmas

Johnnie Christmas is a #1 New York Times best-selling graphic novelist. Writer of the Image Comics sci-fi series Tartarus and Crema, a haunted romance published by Comixology, he’s currently hard at work on three new middle-grade graphic novels for the HarperAlley, an imprint of HarperCollins. His book, Firebug, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and earned him a Joe Shuster Outstanding Cartoonist nomination. He’s perhaps best known for co-creating the series Angel Catbird with celebrated writer Margaret Atwood and adapting William Gibson’s lost screenplay for Alien 3 into a critically acclaimed graphic novel of the same name. His credits also include co-creating the pre-apocalyptic thriller Sheltered. A graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, earning a BFA in Communication Design/Illustration, Johnnie now makes Vancouver, BC his home.

Meags Fitzgerald

Meags Fitzgerald is a Montreal-based graphic novelist, illustrator and performer whose work is informed by history and gender studies. She’s the author of the queer coming of age memoir Long Red Hair and of the history and travelogue, Photobooth: A Biography, for which she won the 2015 Doug Wright Spotlight Award and was nominated for the 2015 Joe Shuster Best Cartoonist Award. She also illustrated the educational graphic novel Suffrage: Canadian Women and the Vote. Her short comics have appeared in French and English in numerous publications including Taddle Creek, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes and Queries, Bitch Magazine, The National Post, Revue Planches and more.

Lorina Mapa

Lorina Mapa was born in the Philippines and moved to North America at the age of 16. She studied at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in New Jersey where she met her husband, cartoonist Daniel Shelton. They currently live in Montreal with their four children. Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos, and Me has been nominated by the American Library Association as a Great Graphic Novel for Teens, and Lorina was featured on the CBC’s 2017 list of Writers to Watch and nominated for the Joe Schuster award for best writer.

Michael Redhill

Michael Redhill is a novelist, poet, playwright and former publisher of Brick Magazine. He is the author of Bellevue Square – which won the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize – Consolation and Martin Sloane, which was a finalist for the 2001 Giller Prize; the short story collection Fidelity; and the poetry collection Light-Crossing, among other acclaimed works. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Seth

Seth is the cartoonist behind the comic book series Palookaville, which started in the stone age as a pamphlet and is now a semi-annual hardcover. His comics have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Best American Comics, and McSweeneys Quarterly. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including the cover of The New Yorker, The Walrus, and Canadian Notes & Queries. He is also Lemony Snicket’s partner for the new young readers series, All the Wrong Questions, and has illustrated and designed a new, deluxe edition of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. He is the designer for several classic comics reprint series, notably collections of work by Charles Schulz, John Stanley, and Doug Wright. His graphic novel Clyde Fans was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The full itinerary for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize Power Panels is:

February – Black History Month
March – International Women’s Day
April – Graphic novels
May – Asian Heritage Month
June – National Indigenous History Month
July – LGBTQ+
August – The Art of Translation

Visit www.scotiabankgillerprize.com for more information and to register for this Giller Power Panel and the ones to follow.

About the Prize

The Giller Prize, founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, highlights the very best in Canadian fiction year after year. In 2005, the prize teamed up with Scotiabank who increased the winnings four-fold. The Scotiabank Giller Prize now awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. The award is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller by her husband Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who passed away in August 2017.

Media Enquiries:
Daphna Rabinovitch, Scotiabank Giller Prize
daphna@gillerprize.ca
T: 416-525-3752