Comics and graphic novel highlight at the Stripped strand of the Edinburgh Book Festival

• Henry Northmore
• 16 July 2013

This article is from 2013

Hannah Berry, Stephen Collins, Posy Simmonds and Gareth Brookes among highlights

Hannah Berry
Writer/artist Berry’s first graphic novel, Britten and Brülightly, was a dark whodunit which she followed up with Adamtime, a horror tale packed with mystery. Her stark style is complemented by black and white art for a grim, noir world populated by enigmatic characters. She’s currently working on a new graphic novel: Livestock.
24 Aug, 8.30pm, £7 (£5).

Stephen Collins
Many readers will know Collins from The Guardian’s Saturday edition in which his musings are presented in strip form every week. His wonderfully titled The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is his first graphic novel, a blackly comic tale of a man’s facial hair that grows and grows and grows. Raymond Briggs is a fan.
24 Aug, 12.30pm, £10 (£8).

Posy Simmonds
Another newspaper favourite, Simmonds has written several strips for The Guardian. Perhaps most famous are her takes on middle England in Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe (which was adapted for the cinema with Gemma Arterton taking the lead role in 2010). She’ll be in town to discuss Mrs Weber’s Omnibus, a compendium of her early work.
24 Aug, 4.30pm, £10 (£8).

Gareth Brookes
The Black Project really is something different, the weird tale of a boy’s secret project to create a girl. However, it’s Brookes’ methodology that really makes his comic stand out: told entirely via lino-cut and embroidery, it’s a complex and idiosyncratic project that earned him First Fictions’ First Graphic Novel award in 2012.
24 Aug, 8.30pm, £7 (£5).

Rutu Modan
Exit Wounds was the first graphic novel to be published in Britain by Israeli artist/writer Modan. The central story is informed by issues troubling modern Israel as our protagonist discovers his father was killed in a suicide bombing. It won the 2008 Eisner Award.
26 Aug, 2pm, £7 (£5).

Edward Ross
The List has been tracking Edinburgh comics artist Ross’ work for some time now. He produced a series of lovely illustrated guides to film theory and followed this up with 100 Tiny Moments from My Past, Present & Future, a semi-real, semi-fictional biography told in his cute graphical style.
23 Aug, 3.30pm, £7 (£5).

All events at Charlotte Square Gardens, 0845 373 5888.