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How we found a literary agent for graphic novels
Can’t believe September is nearly over! We’ve been busy all summer juggling several projects, including two books for Harper Collins. We also signed with a literary agent: https://www.unitedagents.co.uk/sandra-marrs-and-john-chalmers. Which leads us to today’s topic: How we found a literary agent for graphic novels: We’ve just signed with Molly Jamieson at United Agents. Needless to say, […]
Solo Exhibition at The Park Gallery, Callendar House
We’re honoured and delighted to have a major solo exhibition at The Park Gallery, Callendar House. The exhibition is part of Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022 and features work from our 27 years creating comics and graphic novels. Spanning our whole career it includes pages from Strange Weather Lately, our very first comic, selections from […]
Guests at Angoulême Ville Créative
We had a fantastic time at the Rencontres Internationales de la Bande Dessinée conference in Angoulême (Oct 22). We were guests of Angoulême Ville Créative, representing Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature, and participated in a panel on comics and heritage…
Graphic Novel Cover Reveal
Here it is! Our new graphic novel, BLUEBEARD: A Feminist Fairy Tale, out May 2020 from Papercutz. We worked really hard for two years transforming the classic tale. Hope you’ll find it as thrilling to read as it was to make. Expect scary! WARNING: May contain cuteness. With massive thanks to Creative Scotland for their funding […]
Shortlisted for The Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2019
We’re delighted to be shortlisted for The Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2019 in the Visual Artist Award category. The full shortlist for the Visual Artist Category is: Cathy Wilkes, Charlotte Prodger, Metaphrog, Charles Anderson. Full shortlist for all categories: http://newsquestscotlandevents.com/events/cultureawards/ https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17721098.surge-of-creativity-the-short-lists-for-the-herald-scottish-culture-awards/ The winners will be announced at the ceremony on July 11th.
Newspaper write-up
The National newspaper just ran this article at the weekend about our school residency at Holyrood Secondary. You can also read it here: https://www.thenational.scot/news/17618286.holyrood-secondary-pupils-gain-confidence-with-metaphrog-project
Graphic Novel Authors in Residence at Holyrood Secondary
The project! We’ve just finished our residency at Holyrood Secondary, and the project has gone way beyond our expectations! We were hired by Glasgow Life/Glasgow Libraries back in September to deliver a 20 week long residency with pupils from the Roma community in Govanhill in Glasgow. They worked really hard at creating comics and drawings […]
On STV News at 6
STV News at 6 featured us last night, about our Graphic Novel Authors in Residence project with Glasgow Life at Holyrood Secondary. Ian Lebeter of Glasgow Life also talked about the project. We’re working with pupils from Romania and Slovakia helping them tell stories in comic form. They’re sweet kids, and, now 6 weeks into […]
Commissioned illustration for the Dick Institute
Finally saw the illustrations Sandra created for the Dick Institute and East Ayrshire libraries! Here they are at the lovely new refurbished and library and café. Libraries should all look as nice as this one if only they had enough funding.
Graphic Novel Authors in Residence at Glasgow Life
We’ve just been appointed Graphic Novel Authors in Residence by Glasgow Life. Over the next 20 weeks, we’ll be working at Holyrood Secondary School with a group of pupils from Romania and Slovakia, helping them tell their own stories in comic form. Today was our first day. We introduced ourselves, and the project, with a […]
Winners of the SICBA awards Outstanding Achievement to Comics 2018
It was a big surprise and an honour to receive the SICBA Outstanding Achievement to Comics 2018 award! (The Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance awards.) Big thanks to Sha Nazir , Nyla Ahmad , Nicola Love and all the Glasgow Comic Con team.It’s wonderful to have our 23 years in comics recognized in this way […]
The Little Mermaid: winner of The Excelsior Award Junior 2018
Absolutely delighted to learn that The Little Mermaid has won the Excelsior Award Junior 2018. The winner each year is chosen by the young readers from a shortlist of books: http://www.excelsiorawardjunior.co.uk/shortlist2018.html “The Excelsior Award Junior is the only nationwide book award for graphic novels and manga – where kids aged 8-11 decide the winner by rating […]
Commissioned Illustrations for the Dick Institute
We were commissioned by the Dick Institute, in Kilmarnock, to create two illustrations for their current library campaign. Sandra produced the artwork last summer to a precise brief: the images had to be bold and punchy black and white graphics that were at once inviting and unexpected. She proposed several versions of artwork during the […]
The Little Mermaid Shortlisted for The Excelsior Award Junior 2018!
We’re thrilled that The Little Mermaid is shortlisted for The Excelsior Award Junior 2018! You can see the full shortlist here: http://www.excelsiorawardjunior.co.uk/shortlist2018.html
The Little Mermaid goes into 2nd Printing
Great news! The first printing of the Little Mermaid graphic novel has rapidly sold out and our publisher Papercutz are rushing into a 2nd printing before Christmas. The quarter-bound title was released in April 2017 to great acclaim. Promotion included a north American tour and several high profile UK events, including The Edinburgh International Book […]
The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017
We had an absolutely wonderful time at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2017 and it was an honour to be guests once again this year. We kicked off on Saturday morning with a talk about our new graphic novel The Little Mermaid, chaired by Costa award-winning Mary Talbot, followed by a signing in the Page […]
Funding from Creative Scotland for New Graphic Novel
Creative Scotland announced this month’s open project fund awards today. We are honoured and delighted to have been awarded £32,000 towards creating our next graphic novel. This new fairy tale adaptation will follow on from the success of The Red Shoes and Other Tales and The Little Mermaid. The book will be published by […]
BBC News and Brexit
The BBC interviewed us on the news programme Reporting Scotland (23/06/17) about how we feel about our position as a Franco-Scottish couple in the midst of Brexit negotiations, and after the government’s first announcement of how it might treat the 3.5 Million EU nationals living here. Sandra is French and has been established in the UK […]
Little Mermaid Launch Party at Waterstones
Had a fantastic time launching The Little Mermaid graphic novel at Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow! Great turn out, and a very enjoyable evening. Special thanks to Paddy who even brought Sandra flowers – what a gentleman! Sandra created colour sketches in every book and we even left a stock of sketched and signed books […]
American Signing Tour
We’re just back from our American signing tour and are feeling completely recharged and revitalised! What an absolutely FANTASTIC time! We met some truly wonderful people, all passionate about books and comics, and saw lots of amazing things. A massive thanks to Creative Scotland who provided funding – without their support this tour would not have been possible. […]
American Signing Tour
Very excited to announce that we’ll be touring America this May! The tour will kick off at TCAF – The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, where we’ll be part of their special programming: NBM turns 40 (events to be announced soon). Then we’ll be doing a series of signings and events in: Bethesda (DC area): Big […]
On BBC Radio Scotland’s The Janice Forsyth Show
We were delighted to be on the BBC Radio Scotland’s The Janice Forsyth Show yesterday talking about our new graphic novel The Little Mermaid. You can listen again here – our segment is at 1h40min: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jf6ll
20 Years Since Our First Comic!
Unbelievably, this month sees the 20th anniversary of our very first comic. When we met in 1994 we started working on comics together almost right away and, after creating several short comic stories, eventually collected them in our first comic Strange Weather Lately – Martin Nitram #1 in December 1996. We brought this out with limited […]
Winners of The Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2016
We’re honoured and delighted to have won The Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2016 for Best Visual Artist! With Janice Forsyth (left) and Janice Kirkpatrick The award ceremony was a fantastic evening, and it was a pleasure to meet some of the amazing finalists. Runners-up for the Best Visual Artist category were sculptor David J Mitchell, animation film maker and […]
Finalist for The Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2016
We are finalists in the Best Visual Artist category for The Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Awards 2016. The finalists will appear in print in The Sunday Herald this weekend, with winners to be announced on July 7th at the award ceremony. http://newsquestscotlandevents.com/events/sunday-herald-culture-awards/ (scroll down this link for the full list of finalists and judges).
Rosalie Lightning feature for The National
We’ve written a feature for The National newspaper about the graphic memoir Rosalie Lightning by Tom Hart. It’s an incredibly powerful book about the loss of a child: Rosalie Lightning died just before turning two from unexplained causes. Rosalie loved one of our own books, Louis – Night Salad, and Tom integrates this and her other loves, […]
The Red Shoes and Other Tales Deleted Scenes
“Deleted Scene” from The Red Shoes and Other Tales. At the request of our publisher, Papercutz, we changed several pages in the final version of the graphic novel. Here we removed the blood from The Red Shoes story in the final version of the book: Old version: Old version of page 41 in The Red […]