Graphic novelist Gary Panter won one of this year’s American Book Awards (not to be confused with the National Book Awards) for his Jimbo’s Inferno, which was published by Fantagraphics Books in April 2006. Though completed first, Jimbo’s Inferno is the sequel to Panter’s Jimbo in Purgatory.
Jimbo is Panter’s “muscular, buzz-cut adventurer Everyman. In Jimbo’s Inferno, a fractured retelling of Dante’s Inferno, Jimbo is “a wary innocent traveling through the most heinous atmosphere Panter can imagine. For Panter, ‘hell’ is just two letters away from spelling ‘mall’: a gigantic, brain-numbing, info-commerce center called Focky Bocky.”
Panter is an illustrator, painter, designer, and part-time musician. He is, according to Fantagraphics, “a luminary of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began in the early 1980s. He has published his work in various magazines and newspapers, including Raw, Time, and Rolling Stone. He has exhibited all over the world, and won three Emmy awards for his set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.
The formal American Book Award cermony will be on Saturday 2 December 2007 at Laney College Theatre, 900 Fallon Street, Oakland, California, starting at 4PM. Authors attending will read selections from their works and sign copies of their award-winning books. A reception and book signing will take place following the ceremony, which is free to the public. For more information, call (510) 228-6775.
The American Book Awards, sponsored by the Before Columbus Foundation, “were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.”