Catherine Morrissey, Anouk Ricard and Alison Bechdel are three finalists in this year’s Grand Prix The Angoulême de la ville d’Angoulême is a lifetime achievement award given annually to cartoonists at the Angoulême Festival (FIBD), which opens this Wednesday.
For the first time, all three finalists are women, meaning that for the first time a woman will win two years in a row: the 2024 winner will be Posy Simmonds.
Not only does the winner receive one of the highest honors a cartoonist can receive, they also serve as honorary marshals for next year’s event.
The three finalists represent the broad spectrum of cartooning.
Catherine Meurisse is a multiple finalist and is best known for her work on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. She is also a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts and one of the few cartoonists to receive this honor.
Anouk Ricard is best known in the United States for Anna and Froga series, D&Q publishes in North America. Her work appears regularly in Spirou magazine and she was named one of the 25 most interesting women in France by GQ France.
Alison Bechdel, nominated in 2023, is a famous American cartoonist known for happy househer groundbreaking and haunting memoir was adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical. She has a new book out this year: Spent, a humorous Romance novel about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who runs a pygmy goat business in Vermont. The story of a protected area and dealing with fame.
This is the fourth year in a row that Morris has been nominated, so it’s safe to say she’s the favorite.
While the three cartoonists are more than worthy of the honor on the merits of their work, it’s also a big change from just a few years ago, when one of the festival’s directors announced the long list of nominees for 2016 The list is all male because women just haven’t made their mark yet. This led to calls for a boycott and many changes to the event, which now appears to have a more egalitarian approach to honour.
The winner of this year’s Grand Prix will be announced on Wednesday.
