Joe Sacco wins Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award
April 30, 2012
The first winner of the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award at the 2012 Oregon Book Awards is Joe Sacco, for his book, Footnotes in Gaza.
Sacco’s Footnotes was among an impressive list of work including PNCA alumna Aidan Koch’s ‘09 (Illustration) The Whale, Graham Annable’s The Book of Grickle, Sarah Oleksy’s Ivy, and Greg Rucka’s Stumptown.
Published in 2009, Footnotes in Gaza is a journalistic graphic novel about two bloody incidents during the Suez War. The book describes the author’s quest to find out what happened in Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956.
The Graphic Literature Award was created in April 2011 during a week that included a visit to PNCA by award-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, author of Maus. Read more about the creation of the award here.
In 2008, PNCA’s Feldman Gallery + Project Space exhibited a retrospective of Sacco’s work. In the Oregonian, Brian Libby noted, “Sacco’s work—mostly simple black-and-white, storyboard-like renderings in this show—brings alive the everyday reality of living amid violence. It’s not about the violence toward him but instead the consequences for the innocent.”
PNCA’s Illustration program fuses professional practice with personal vision, pushing students to develop the hybrid skill-sets needed to flourish in today’s dynamic, multi-media marketplace. Learn more about the Illustration program’s students and faculty on the Illustration Tumblr site. Read more about Koch’s The Whale here.