JULIAN HANSHAW

Three of the UK’s most heralded graphic novelists discuss and read from their recent works from Jonathan Cape and Blank Slate Books. William Goldsmith presents Vignettes of Ystov, an engrossing story cycle set within a fictional “vaguely Eastern European” city. Darryl Cunningham talks about the real-life experiences that inspired Psychiatric Tales, his collection of stigma-busting accounts set within an acute psychiatric ward. Winner of the Cape/Observer Comica Graphic Short Story Prize, Julian Hanshaw gives insight into the Vietnam-inspired The Art of Pho, which has been described as “part travelogue, part dream, part cookbook”. Chaired by Martin Steenton, of comic arts blog Avoid the Future.

The ‘Art of Pho’ is the first graphic novel to come from Julian Hanshaw, a long-time animation artist whose short story Sand Dunes and Sonic Booms won the Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Prize in 2008. Drawing inspiration from the time he spent in Vietnam, Hanshaw has spun a tale that is part travelogue, part dream and part cookbook.

The story centres around the national dish of Vietnam – the noodle soup pho. When Little Blue - having been dropped by a mysterious man with a red car and being told to count to 500 - finds himself in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's baffling, daunting capital, his salvation is his own mobile pho stand. Little Blue's relationship with the city and its food brings an understanding to what it means to never want to return home and the fact that everyone goes away in the end.