Mary M. Talbot's Blog

Just back from Paris again. We were over last month for book signings at the Ministry of Finance(!), at Planète Dessin, Montparnasse, and at Millepages in Vincennes, where Les Carnets de Stanford Hawksmoor (the French edition of The Casebook of Stanford Hawksmoor) had received the Prix Millepages 2025. We managed to visit the extensive Leonora Carrington exhibition in the Luxembourg Museum, just off Luxembourg Gardens. Both are well worth a visit if you’re in Paris. The exhibition had just opened when we went in March and it’s on until the end of August, I think. This time we were there for the Festival du livre de Paris (the Paris Book Fair), in the Grand Palais no less! Invited over by Laurent Lerner of Délirium again, Bryan had a busy three days doing dédicaces: signing and sketching at the stand. The surroundings were spectacular! Here are some photos:

Mary Wollstonecraft imagines a domestic scene. Picture a husband and wife at home: The domestic trifles of the day have afforded matters for cheerful converse, and innocent caresses have softened toils which did not require great exercise of mind or stretch of thought: yet, has not the sight of this moderate felicity excited more tenderness than respect? An emotion similar to what we feel when children are playing, or animals sporting. Mary wanted to bring about nothing less than ‘a revolution in female manners’. She wanted women to gain respect, dignity, independence. For that they had to be allowed to act like grown-ups: ‘How grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes!’ Women were expected to marry, thereby becoming legal property of the husband: ‘the slavery of marriage’, as Mary described it. She knew from her own experience that other options were limited: ‘Few are the ways of making a subsistence, and those very humiliating’. Lady’s Companion, Teacher, Governess – she’d tried them all. Governess was definitely her least favourite. So, in August 1787, she became a staff writer for Joseph Johnson Esq of St Paul’s Churchyard. And she proudly announced to her sisters: ‘I am the first of a new genus’ Mary Wollstonecraft was magnificent. Lo! An Amazon! The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft will be published by the award-winning independent publisher, SelfMadeHero in September 2026.

Well, this year’s visit to Angoulême was certainly different! We were there for the Grand Off alternative BD festival which, of course, was much smaller than the cancelled Festival de la Bande Dessinée de Angoulême. No dense crowds of people in the streets, at least not when we arrived. Le Chat Noir almost empty on Friday night! It was a very friendly, intimate event overall. Bryan was kept very busy, though. Delérium, his French publisher, had invited him over to do signings at the stand in Le Villages des Editeurs (Publishers’ Village). This was located by the BD museum, down by the river Charante. Here are some photos (some of them a bit blurry, I’m afraid):

Late last year, we did an interview with Billy Barnell for his Half the Picture podcast. In case you’re interested, here it is on YouTube:

2025 continues to be busy. On Saturday 1st-Sunday 2nd November, Bryan was a guest at FACTS Belgian Comic Con, which was in the Flanders Expo centre in Ghent. The day before, there was a signing in the centre of Ghent, at Paard van Troje,  a great independent bookshop, with substantial graphic-novel sections in both Dutch and English. Before the signing, Kris, the proprietor, took us for lunch followed by a long walking tour of the fine city centre. Thanks for a great afternoon, Kris. For the rest of our visit, we were in and around the Flanders expo complex, some distance from the centre. Unlike most ‘Comicons’ these days, this annual 2-day event actually features comics quite prominently, alongside the usual games, cosplay etc. Bryan was kept pretty busy and we were well looked after by the friendly crew. When it was all over on the Sunday evening, we went out for a final nosh with fellow guests: Steve Leialoha, John McCrea and his daughter Ellie. Cheers! Then a few days later we were off again. Bryan’s Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor has just come out in English, so we were down in London for that. On Thursday 6th there was an invite-only launch event at the Cartoon Museum, where it was great seeing friends and family. It was a rare treat to have our sons Robyn and Alwyn there. Also Bryan’s French publisher, Laurent Lerner, came over from Paris to attend. Here we are in a bar afterwards, with my brother Bill Atherton, Robyn and Laurent. This private event was followed on Saturday 8th by a public signing session in Gosh! That’s James Robertson, who runs Bryan’s website, sitting next to him.  Thanks to Alwyn Talbot and Mauricio Molizane for the Cartoon Museum and Gosh! photos. So where’s next? Oh yes, Edinburgh. Maybe see you there?

The international guests were in Bowness by Thursday, the day before the festival began. They were cordially invited to come on a leisurely cruise on Lake Windermere. We had the pleasure of joining them. It was a perfect evening. On board, we met Tonje Tornes, a Norwegian publisher who had come to the festival for the international rights fair on Friday and Saturday. Mohammed Sabaaneh, an exhibitor from Palestine, is sitting behind us in the photo below, though we only got to meet him later.The following afternoon we took one of the guests, Craig Thompson, out for lunch and a bit of sightseeing, along with two mutual friends, Dave Scroggy and Rosemary Thornton. Here we are at the Mason’s Arms and Cartmel Fell Church, two of the locations in Bryan’s beautiful Tale of One Bad Rat. We went to the opening event and awards ceremony in the evening (details available here) and to Grant Morrison’s on-stage interview with John McShane (available to view here) We were mostly in the Comics Marketplace, however, where our son Robyn joined us for the first time this year, with his own self-published comic, hot from the press. Read all about it here!

We’ve been on the train to France again! This time we were guests at a warm and welcoming science fiction festival in Mérignac, near Bordeaux. Bryan’s five-volume Grandville series had been selected for the Prix ActuSF Graphique, so he was there to receive it and, of course, to continue promoting his recently published Carnets de Stamford Hawksmoor.There was a reception at Mérignac town hall in the evening for all the people invited to the Festival Hypermondes #5. These guests included Jean-Pierre Dionnet, founder of the legendary magazine Métal hurlant, and the co-creators of the Cités obscures cycle, Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten. Benoît is a scholar who has written extensively on Hergé, among others. He was my predecessor as Visiting Professor of Graphic Narrative at Lancaster University.

5th – 13th September 2025 The launch of Les carnets de Stamford Hawksmoor began in Espace Bis, the exhibition space of Bulle! bookshop in Le Mans. There’s an exhibition there of Hawksmoor original artwork, until 27th September. It was officially opened on the 5th with a panel discussion session alongside Fred Simon and Matz, who also have work on display there. We had a relaxing, touristy day in Paris, after which there were five more bookshops to go for Bryan’s launch tour. The next stage took us down to revisit the lovely city of Toulouse, for signing sessions at Le Comptoir du Rêve, . After that, we travelled back north (and I’m not going into the complications that entailed…) to bookshops in places we’ve never been before: La Dule en Bulle in Reuil-Malmaison, Ça va buller in Strasbourg and L’Octopus in Epinal. Finally, we returned to Paris for a last signing session at La Planète Dessin in Montparnasse. Phew.  

On 8th and 9th June, we were at the warm and welcoming Enniskillen Comic Con in Northern Ireland, with numerous other guests, including 2000AD veterans Garth Ennis, Will Simpson and John Wagner. The organisers were proudly showing us the comic they’d facilitated, written and drawn by all the pupils at Irvinestown Primary School. On 21st June, we were down  in London for a Cape Graphic Novels one-day event at Foyles bookstore. The day was showcasing Alison Bechdel’s new book, Spent, which she presented in lively fashion in the last session. Before it, there were three panel discussions, pictured below.

The Italian edition of Bryan’s Legend of Luther Arkwright launched last week. ARF! Il Festival del Fumetto and Tunué, the publishers, invited us to a small, friendly festival in Rome to promote it. Bryan was kept busy with interviews, panels and signing sessions, though we took a morning off to do some sightseeing. Our hotel balcony had a fine view of the festival site – a former abbatoir! On the way to Rome we stopped over in Paris and then in Milan, where Bryan did a signing in a comicshop called Supergulp. As we were staying close to Gare de Lyon in Paris, we checked out the Cinématèque that’s close by. Well worth a visit! There was a extensive exhibition on the work of Wes Anderson. We looked around that and then the permanent exhibition on the beginnings of cinema, with particular focus on Georges Méliés. We came home to the splendid news that Bryan’s Granville series has won a French literary award: the 2025 Prix Graphique of the ActuSF Prize for Uchronia! Each year, ActuSF rewards the best works relating to alternative history. The prize will be given the weekend of Sept 20th-21st, at the Hypermonde Festival held in Mérignac, near Bordeaux. We’ll be there!