Flemish illustrators receive awards at Frankfurt Book Fair

On the evening of 10 October, the Global Illustration Awards 2018 were presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. A number of Flemish illustrators bagged prizes.

In the ‘Book Illustration’ category Jacques Maes and Lise Braekers (who publish together under the name Jacques & Lise) won an Excellence Award for Viktor, a children’s book about a hunter who kills a cheetah and afterwards is filled with remorse and tries to make amends. The duo also took home the first prize: the Grand Award for best illustrators of 2018.

In the category ‘Theme Illustration’ Fatinha Ramos received an Excellence Award for an image about discrimination. Fatinha Ramos also created the campaign image for Every Story Matters, a conference on diversity which took place in September 2018 and which was co-organised by Flanders Literature. Last year she also received an Excellence Award for her illustrations in the book ‘Sonia Delaunay: A Life of Color’, which had been commissioned by MoMa, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In total, over 8,000 illustrators from more than 45 countries around the globe submitted work, making the number of awards and the first prize for a small region such as Flanders all the more remarkable.