The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is pleased to announce the 2025 Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation – English. This year’s award will again be presented in partnership with VIP Brands, Ltd, Comica and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, at the Festival’s annual ceremony in Bowness-on-Windermere on Saturday, 27th September 2025.

The Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation are for the best translation of graphic novels into a variety of languages around the world.

Launched in 2023, the Sophie Castille Award – English is an award for the best translation of a non-English graphic novel into English, a project initiated by VIP Brands Ltd., in partnership with Comica and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. 

Michele Hutchison was the winner of the inaugural Award in 2023, for her translation of The Philosopher, The Dog and the Wedding by Barbara Stok, published in English by SelfMadeHero.

Alexa Frank was the 2024 winner of in the Sophie Castille Award - English, for her translation of  “沖合の雷” (“Offshore Lightning”) by Saito Nazuna, translated from Japanese, published by Drawn & Quarterly.

The 2025 Sophie Castille Award- English is now open for submission. Publishers from around the world are invited to submit their comics translated into English for consideration.

These awards have been created in honour of Sophie Castille, international rights director and V. P. of licensing for Mediatoon, cofounder and director of Europe Comics, who died unexpectedly in 2022. 

Since the late 1990s, Sophie built bridges for bandes dessinées and their authors, out of France and around the world. She was a constant source of creativity, motivating publishers from throughout the world and encouraging them to exchange ideas and, as a result, became a key figure in the growth of translation of comics and graphic novels worldwide.

The goal is to have these awards in as many languages in the world as possible. Since the Award was launched in the UK in 2023, other countries have launched their own iterations, including the Greek Comics Academy, the Lodz Comics Festival in Poland, Napoli Comicon in Italy, the Tinta Festival Slovenia in Slovenia and Comic Barcelona in Spain.

The 2025 Sophie Castille Awards started with Comic Barcelona’s second year. This year’s winner is Carlos Mayor for Obra hermética, by Moebius, Edita Reservoir. Comicon, Naples and the Greek Comics Academy will announce this year’s winners 3rd May and 14th May respectively. 

For more information, please go to sophie-castille-awards.org

The UK jury will again be comprised of three judges: 

Alex Fitch is the presenter of the UK's only monthly broadcast radio show on comics - Panel Borders - on the Arts Council Radio Station in London. He has been widely published on the topics of film and graphic novels, lectures on the History of Animation at the University of Brighton, and is an award-winning postgraduate comics scholar.

Dr Harriet E. H. Earle is a senior lecturer of English at Sheffield Hallam University and a research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at Nipissing University in Canada. She is the author of Silence in the Quagmire: The Vietnam War in US Comics and Comics: An Introduction.

Gabi Putnoki is the driving force behind the Graphic Novel Reading Room, a comic community initiative spreading the love of graphic novel reading and bringing new readers to the form.

Comics and graphic novels, considered in France as The Ninth Art, are a diverse and dynamic international medium that are growing in popularity every year and are loved the world over. Spreading these works internationally through translation is a way to bring the world together.

With comics in translation becoming an important influence in the publishing world, VIP Brands Ltd, Comica and LICAF are delighted to continue to honour Sophie’s memory and her work to promote comics in translation around the world with these new Awards.

“The Sophie Castille Awards are global awards created to honour and recognise the work of comics translators,’ explains Ivanka Hahnenberger, General Manager of VIP Brands, “Often unsung heroes this award highlights the importance of translation in the world of comics, and recognises the skill and dedication of those who contribute significantly to the international dissemination of comics which was very important to Sophie Castille.”

This year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Bowness-on-Windermere will take place over the weekend of the 26th – 28th September 2025.

• The Entry Form for this year’s Sophie Castille Award can be downloaded here, from the Lakes International Comic Art Festival website or here from the Comics Can Change the World website, which focuses on the Festival’s development work outside the Festival. 

• The Sophie Castille Awards official site at sophie-castille-awards.org features the latest information of participants in this major international program promoting this vital but often overlooked aspect of comics publishing