NEW GRAPHICS PRIZE LAUNCHED IN LONDON

JONATHAN CAPE, in association with the Observer and the annual ICA Comica Festival, is launching a graphic novel short story prize to "celebrate and promote the art of the graphic novel and offer a platform for the graphic novelists of the future to emerge".

The competition's winner will receive £1,000 and publication in the Observer, as well as featuring at the ICA in October. The runner-up will receive £250.

Dan Franklin, Cape's Publisher, commented that: "We already publish many of the best-known authors in the graphic field - Chris Ware, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Posy Simmonds, Raymond Briggs, Dan Clowes. With this competition we are hoping to discover new authors who can combine words and pictures with the same brilliance."

Franklin and Observer Literary Editor Robert McCrum will judge the entries, along with novelist Nick Hornby, Guardian cartoonist and author Posy Simmonds. Paul Gravett, author and Director of Comica, Suzanne Dean, Creative Director of Random House, and Observer journalist Rachel Cooke.

A feature will run in the newspaper next Sunday, and the closing date for entries is 14 October.