Alliance Française (The French Library)
1 Kildare Street, Dublin 2

Sarah Bowie     website  |  instagram

Sarah Bowie is a cartoonist, illustrator, and co-founder of The Comics Lab and of Ireland's first Graphic Short Story Prize in partnership with The Irish Times. Her Seen and Heard in Dublin comic strip is updated weekly on Instagram and her latest picture book We’re going to the zoo! is in bookshops now.

Eoin Coveney     website

Eoin Coveney is an Irish illustrator who has been working for a highly diverse client base for nearly 25 years. His understanding of narrative art has been informed by working with some of the top names in the Graphic Novel field, including Will Eisner, Gordon Rennie and John Wagner. He has contributed to many international magazines such as FHM, ZOO, Engineering / Technology & Attitude Magazines (UK) and Bild (Germany). International publishers such as Pearson, Harper Collins are also regular clients. His work appears regularly in national and international press, including the Irish Independent, The Irish Times and The Independent UK. Since 2013, he has been contributing to 2000AD, co-creating a new story and characters - The Alienist, which recently finished its second series.

Alan Dunne     website  |  instagram

Alan Dunne is an award-winning illustrator living and working in Dublin. He enjoys working on narrative based projects. He worked for 12 years on a broad range of documentaries, opening title designs and TV shows for RTÉ television, Ireland’s national broadcaster. He now writes and illustrates short story comics and was twice shortlisted for the Jonathan Cape / Comica / Observer Graphic Short competition. He is a recipient of the Cecil Day-Lewis Literature Award by Kildare County Council, and was awarded best emerging talent at the IDI Irish Design Awards in 2017.

Philip Elliott     website  |  instagram

Philip Elliott is an illustrator and designer. Formerly an art director in the advertising business, he has been telling stories for clients for many years through film, animation and print. In recent years he has ventured into the medium of comics for storytelling. He has exhibited his work and illustrated children’s books. He loves to turn words upside-down and inside-out and will do anything to illustrate a good pun. He is a member of Illustrators Ireland and on the organizing committee for this year’s festival.

Jacques Ferrandez     website

The “fusion” between comic book creator Jacques Ferrandez and Albert Camus’s work was destined to happen. Born in 1955 in Algiers, Ferrandez grew up and studied in Nice at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He soon became known as a specialist of Algerian issues following the release of Les Carnets d'Orient in 1987. A former neighbour of Ferrandez’s grandmother in Algiers, Albert Camus has long lived in Ferrandez’s family memories. Camus became evermore important for Ferrandez when he discovered his short story, L'Hôte. Camus’ daughter, Catherine Camus, was familiar with Ferrandez’s work and gave him the rights to adapt her father’s short story: the comic book was published in 2009. L'Étranger followed in 2013, and more recently, Le Premier Homme, which is based on the unfinished novel found in Camus’s satchel following the car accident that cost him his life in 1960.

Clare Foley    website

Clare Foley is a Dublin-based illustrator and comic creator. She released her first comic, La Grande Breteche in 2016, an adaptation of an Honoré de Balzac short story. This was followed by Frozen Waste (written by Aaron Fever) in 2017, and the Blood Runs Cold anthology in 2018 with a number of different writers and letterers. She is a member of Rogue Comics Ireland. She works in traditional media, using watercolour and pencil, sometimes accompanied by hand-lettering.

Debbie Jenkinson makes comics and illustrations in Dublin 9. Her comics explore the small triumphs and frustrations of ordinary life, like Remorse, a long comic about a girl who gets trapped in a call centre job for ten years. Failed romances, overfed cats and the inner lives of office workers feature again and again in her stories. Her next long project is another romantic misadventure set in Dublin called Ghosting. She is co-founder of the Comics Lab (now a part of DCAF), a social media officer of Illustrators Ireland and a member of Stray Lines Comics Collective.

Julien Laloy was born in Brussels in 1972. He spent his first 20 years drawing and reading comics, then studied French literature and became a teacher at the Alliance Française in Brussels. In 2003, he married an Irish woman and joined an evening class where he created comics and numerous short stories. In 2017, he moved to Ireland with his family where he now enjoys the Irish countryside with his wife and four sons.

Paddy Lynch is a cartoonist, educator and graphic designer from Dublin, Ireland. Through his comics he seeks to embrace and explore the complicated and often contradictory experiences that make us tick and reveal who we truly are. His comics have been published both domestically and internationally including: My Last Day at Seventeen a collaboration with acclaimed photographer Doug DuBois, published by Aperture Foundation. Big Jim: Jim Larkin and the 1913 Lockout, published by the O’Brien Press, We Speak in Code an ongoing series of poetic vignettes based around Dublin City. He has appeared in comics anthologies such as Zona (Comics Workbook, Pittsburgh USA) and š! (Kuš!, Latvia). He publishes his own work and the works of others in the anthology Stray Lines.

Elida Maiques is a visual artist with a strong background in comics. She has been self-publishing comics since 1999, with some of her work receiving awards and distinctions. Originally from Valencia, Spain, she moved to Ireland in 2003; she is a member of the Stray Lines collective and an associate of the Plutón Cultural Centre. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and books, including Gods and Monsters of Tomorrow, Rírá, Polen and Courageous Mayhem. Her work has been exhibited in museums and art centres such as CentroCentro Cibeles, Madrid (Spain) and IVAM (Valencian Museum of Modern Art), Valencia (Spain).

Melody Ung is an illustrator and a cartoonist, originally from Paris. She is passionate about drawing stories since she was a kid and for many years these comics were only released among her family and closest friends. She finally decided to launch her blog Orchimy.com in May 2016. The main topics are her double culture (French/Vietnamese), being an expat in Dublin and her dear cat. All the comics are both in French and English.

Margaret Anne Suggs is on the Board of Directors for Illustrators Ireland and when she is not illustrating, she is lecturing at Ballyfermot College of Further Education where she founded the Illustration course. Her recent books include A Cup of Tea (by Eric LaBranche - Clavis) and Happy Christmas, Pigín (by Kathleen Watkins - Gill Books).