Five authors received a travel grant by the FLF to visit the festival: Pieter De Poortere, Jeroen Janssen, Kristof Spaey, Séb C. and Charel Cambré. Others, like Brecht Evens, Randall C., Nix, Judith Vanistendael and Conz, will also travel to Angoulême. Conz will be followed by a television crew of culture magazine Cobra TV, which is broadcasted on Canvas on Sunday evenings.
Nix is nominated for the fourth time for ‘Kinky & Cosy'. Judith Vanistendael has a second shot at winning one of the prestigious prizes for the sequel to 'De maagd en de neger' (‘The virgin and the negro'). The first book has been translated into French and Italian, and will appear in Spanish in February 2010. A German and an English translation are expected soon.
In 2009, Flanders was guest-of-honour at the Angoulême festival and the Flemish comics scene was hard to miss, not in the least thanks to the exhibition ‘Ceci n'est pas la BD flamande'. This resulted in a lot of media attention in Belgium and abroad, as well as in a boost of translation grants for graphic novels. In the past twelve months, with the support of the FLF, 'Jaren van de olifant' (‘Years of the Elephant') by Willy Linthout was published in English, 'My boy' by Olivier Schrauwen in Italian, two volumes of 'Boerke' (‘Dickie') by Pieter De Poortere in Hungarian, 'Esther' by Kim Duchateau in Italian, 'De maagd en de neger' (‘The virgin and the negro') by Judith Vanistendael in Italian and 'Ergens waar je niet wil zijn' (‘Somewhere you don't want to be') by Brecht Evens in French. At least five more translations are in the pipeline.
This year, the FLF will build on this success, amongst others with a 'soirée flamande'. On Friday evening, together with the Flemish representation and Flanders Investment and Trade (FIT), the FLF hosts a dinner party at which mainly foreign contacts will attend and the authors will be present and performing.
