VIP Brands Ltd. is delighted to announce the 2025 Sophie Castille Award – English. This year’s award will again be presented in partnership with Comica and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival at their annual event in Bowness-on-Windermere this autumn, taking place Friday 26th September – Sunday 28th September 2025.
The Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation are for the best translation of graphic novels into a variety of languages around the world.
Now in its third year, the Sophie Castille Award – English is an award for the best translation of a non-English graphic novel into English.
Similar awards for the translation of comics into other languages are also taking place in Spain, Poland, Greece, Slovenia and Italy. The ultimate goal is to have these awards in as many countries in the world as possible.
Publishers across the globe are being invited to submit for consideration graphic novels they have published that are translations of works into English.
The jury will again comprise three judges:
Alex Fitch is the presenter of the UK's only monthly broadcast radio show on comics - Panel Borders - on the Arts Council Radio Station in London. He has been widely published on the topics of film and graphic novels, lectures on the History of Animation at the University of Brighton, and is an award-winning postgraduate comics scholar.
Dr Harriet E. H. Earle is a senior lecturer of English at Sheffield Hallam University and a research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at Nipissing University in Canada. She is the author of Silence in the Quagmire: The Vietnam War in US Comics and Comics: An Introduction.
Gabi Putnoki is the driving force behind the Graphic Novel Reading Room, a comic community initiative spreading the love of graphic novel reading and bringing new readers to the form.
Submission Guidance
• Submissions should be made to the Lakes International Comic Art Festival no later than 20th June 2025
• Entries are limited to a maximum of six works per publishing company, the works must have been released in 2024 – and only one per series
• Translators must be credited in the work
• The Entry Form can be downloaded from the link below (Word document)
• Full guidance on submissions can be found here: sophie-castille-awards.org or on this page of the LICAF website
Should you have any specific questions please address them to Carole Tait (carole@comicartfestival.com)
• Entry forms should be emailed to Maheen Murtaza at maheen@comicartfestival.com by 20th June 2025
• To complete entries please send full PDFs via email, WeTransfer, Dropbox or similar to maheen@comicartfestival.com
• We will request hard copies of works which reach the short list stage at the beginning of July 2025
A VIP Brands Ltd initiative with the support of LICAF and COMICA
