Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Sayra Begum, a Cornwall-based illustrator.

She studied Illustration at Plymouth College of Art and then completed a master’s degree in Illustration at Falmouth University; with a focus on female and marginalised voices.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Tomáš Kučerovský, one of the weekend-long event's Czech creators.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Ken Niimura, a cartoonist and illustrator based in Tokyo.

His breakthrough in the industry came with the publication of the acclaimed graphic novel, I Kill Giants, earning him and fellow Festival guest, writer Joe Kelly, nominations for the prestigious Eisner Award and winning the International Manga Award in 2012.

Poet Simon Armitage, Edmond Baudoin, Victoria Lomasko, Dave McKean and the UK’s Comics Laureate Charlie Adlard are among creators whose work features in a new international comic anthology – Traces of the Great War – which gets its launch during the Lakes international Comic Art Festival this weekend.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Ottilie Hainsworth, an artist and educator living in Brighton, where she runs a course called “Graphic Novels and Real Life Stories”.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Mark Stafford, co-creator of the Cherubs! graphic novel with Bryan Talbot, who also collaborated with David Hine on a British Comic Award-nominated adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs.

He is the longstanding cartoonist-in-residence at The Cartoon Museum, London.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is David Hine, who has been working in comics since the early 1980s.

After his graphic novel Strange Embrace was published in the US, he was hired by Marvel to write several series, including District X, Daredevil: Redemption, Silent War and Spider-Man Noir.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Ian Kennedy, a British comic artist whose work most British comics readers will know very well.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is Kaisa Leka, a Finnish comics artist and adventurer who, together with partner Christoffer Leka, publishes autobiographical books about the nature of being.

When not drawing Kaisa is usually exploring the world on a bike, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Every year, in the countdown to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, we bring you a series of interviews with guests at the event. This “Festival Focus” for 2018 is possibly the event's youngest exhibitor ever,  Drew Marr from Dundee, Scotland - who could not be more excited about his first visit to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival this October!