@ Edinburgh International Book Festival on Fri 28 Aug 2015 @ 14:00

For the past three years one of the most exciting strands at the Edinburgh International Book Festival has been dedicated to comic books and graphic novels. The Stripped strand has invited writers and artists from around the world to discuss their works of sequential art. This year Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal kick of a weekend of Stripped events with an hour focussing on their fourth collaboration together. They discuss their autobiographical graphic novel Behind the Curtain in an event chaired by Sarah Crompton.

Behind The Curtain is set in the 1970’s and follows the pair as they travel from the UK to communist Poland to live and work as artists. The event this afternoon is called When Poland Made Its Mark and the artists discuss their creative process and the difficulties they encounters at this period of Polish history. Illustrations from the book are projected behind the creators as they talk. A selection of these images are dark grey pencil sketches that reflect the austerity that they encountered. Despite the bleak back drop Klimowski is quick to point out – “We liked the cultural life. It was rich. What was going on in theatre, galleries, cinema, literature. It was vibrant.” Schejbal has a background in costume and fashion design and has worked in the theatre. Her costume designs have influenced her graphic storytelling and illustrious and evocative costumes can be seen in her approach to creating a graphic novel and telling a story through images and text. It is these costume designs that showcase the vibrancy that Klimowski highlights in the engaging conversation.

The working relationship between the two artists is not the typical writer and artist collaborative approach that is common in comic books. They state that they don’t consider themselves writers and compare the creative process of creating graphic novels as closer to poetry than prose.

Behind The Curtain is available now from Independent graphic novel publisher Self Made Hero. The event this afternoon at the Edinburgh International Book Festival completely expressed the creativity and imagination that goes into developing a work of autobiographical storytelling that combines words and images and underlined that the Stripped strand at the Book Festival continues to produce stand out events.