

Her work, which she publishes in limited editions in silkscreen, continues to be published by Drawn & Quarterly. The title was picked up in 1991 by the Montreal-based publisher Drawn & Quarterly, and, after living in New York, Seattle and Berlin, Julie Doucet returned to Montreal where she lives and works, working in graphic arts. During her studies, she discovered comics and began publishing a photocopied fanzine: Dirty Plotte, in which she documented her daily life, her dreams and her anxieties in French and English. Julie Doucet, born in 1965 in Montreal studied visual arts at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal in the early 1980s, and enrolled at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she completed a certificate in printing arts. In 2020, she adapted Roald Dahl's novel The Witches and in 2022 she tackled her first autobiography with Les Strates. In 2016, she created a series of comic book portraits of women under the title Culottées, which won an Eisner Award in 2019, and was adapted into an animated version by France TV. The success of the collection led her to create her first long story with Cadavre exquis, in 2010, then her first biography with California Dreamin' which won the Harvey Award in 2018. After studying at the Arts Déco in Paris, then at Central Saint Martins in London, she created Ma vie est tout à fait fascinante in 2007, a webcomic in which she describes the daily life of a young Parisian with a humour and grace. Pénélope Bagieu was born in 1982 in Paris. There are only a handful of times when they have had any women on it.


Catherine Meurisse was previously nominated, but this is the first time the Festival has had an all-women shortlist. The three nominated comic book creators are Pénélope Bagieu, Julie Doucet and Catherine Meurisse. The first stage of the selection of the 2022 Grand Prix, which took place from 21 to 27 February, has just ended.
