Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) yesterday wrapped up his visit to the UK by announcing plans for the launch next year of the Taiwan International Comics Festival, which he said would be curated by a British comics historian.
Li unveiled the plan during a visit to the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London, Britain's first purpose-built, permanently dedicated illustration space and the largest of its kind in the world.
The Ministry of Culture has supported Taiwan's comics industry since 2018, when it introduced a subsidy program, and later expanded its efforts with grants for longer-form works, translation initiatives, cross-sector collaborations and the establishment of the National Taiwan Museum of Comics, Li said.
Photo: CNA
With next year marking a decade of those efforts, the Ministry of Culture would launch the inaugural Taiwan International Comics Festival, with British comics historian and critic Paul Gravett as the curator, Li said.
In response, Gravett said he hoped the event would demonstrate that "Taiwanese comics are part of the world's comics."
The inaugural festival, to be held at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, aims to present comics as a major art form with greater ambition and a broader vision, said Gravett, a frequent visitor to Taiwan.
Later yesterday, Li met with Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood, who praised the novel Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子), which won this year’s International Booker Prize.
Translated by Lin King (金翎), the novel is beautiful, complex and sweet, Wood said, adding that its portrayal of the relationship between two women and its rich descriptions of food deepen its political and cultural themes.
During the meeting, Wood presented Li with a double-exposure black-and-white photograph of Yang and Lin that she had taken with a 1950s camera during this year's Hay Festival in Wales, saying the image symbolized the close collaboration between the author and translator.
Wood also discussed the inaugural Children's Booker Prize, which she said was created partly in response to concerns about declining reading among children and would be awarded in February next year.
Young readers would serve on the panel of judges to help choose the winning title, she said.
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