Simon
Grennan
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Graphic novelist and scholar of visual narrative.

Biography

I have recently (2017) published an academic book titled A Theory of Narrative Drawing with New York publisher Palgrave Macmillan. I have been working on the book for three years. It presents a new systematic framework for thinking about comics.

In 2015, I completed a graphic adaptation of the novel John Caldigate, one of the later works of nineteenth century novelist Anthony Trollope, commissioned by the University of Leuven, Belgium. Titled Dispossession, the long-form graphic novel takes both Trollope’s writing style and his life and times as its subject, as well as his novel’s plot, with startling results. Dispossession is published by Jonathan Cape and, in French translation, by Les Impressions Nouvelles.

In 2016, I lead a team that aunched a new free online archive of the work of nineteenth century London cartoonist and actress Marie Duval (1847 – 1890) www.marieduval.org Duval was a unique visualiser and story teller of Victorian London life. Forthcoming in 2018 are two books about Duval, co-written with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite: an academic study and glorious and charming picture book.

I am also co-editor of a scholarly book that accompanies Dispossession. Transforming Trollope… which brings together 11 new commissioned chapters from international neo-Victorian, adaptation and comics scholars and is published by Leuven University Press, also in 2015.

Recent visual arts research projects aimed at non-academic audiences include commissions and awards, such as Memories Materialised, a Heritage Lottery Funded community engagement project in Manchester (2012), Colchester Round, an Arts Council funded project in Colchester involving the community and military in a music focused production (2012) and Truce Tableaux, a youth focused film project which funded by The National Lottery (2013).
These projects have been undertaken with long-term collaborative partner Christopher Sperandio, Associate Professor of Fine Art at Rice University, Houston, USA.

Author photographs © Daniel Hall 2016 and Richard Tymon 2017. Website by Rachael Design
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