Last November, Anna Readman, 26, gave up her job in a Leeds comics shop, hoping to make a living full time from cartooning. But the year since hasn’t been easy. The two big gigs she had lined up fell through soon afterwards. “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster,” she says. “I’ve been jumping from little job to little job, trying to make ends meet.” All of which makes the news that she is the winner of the 2023 Observer/Faber graphic short story prize so much sweeter. (Even better, this was the first time she had entered, having long been nagged to do so by her mum, an Observer subscriber.) It’s a few days since she heard the news, but she still sounds slightly in shock.
