ARA Comic Award: 10,000 euros for a short comic in Catalan
The ARA announces the sixth edition of the non-fiction comic book competition in Catalan with the support of the Department of Language Policy.
BarcelonaThe ARA (Argentine Association of Catalan Comics) is once again announcing the Ara Prize for Comics in Catalan. This will be the sixth edition of the award, which was created with the aim of promoting the creation of comics in Catalan in non-fiction genres, where the language was underrepresented, and thus stimulating the production of journalistic, biographical, autobiographical, and essay-based comics in Catalan. The initiative is supported by the Department of Language Policy of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), and the rules for the call can be found on the website. Premicomic.ara.cat.
The prize for the winning work will be 10,000 euros. Authors wishing to participate in the competition organized by the ARA must submit their works by September 7, 2025: short non-fiction comics in Catalan, with a minimum length of ten pages and a maximum of sixteen. In addition, a selection of the best comics received in the prize competition will be included in the anthology. Vineyard 6, which will be published by Editorial Finestres in early 2026. The authors of each selected work in Vineyard 6 will receive 300 euros from the ARA and 200 euros from Finestres Publishing.
In the five previous editions of the ARA Comic Prize, a total of more than 350 works have been received, demonstrating the potential of Catalan non-fiction comics. The panorama of the sector has been changing in recent years, and publishers are increasingly investing in publishing local authors in Catalan and in the translation of foreign works. Since the arrival of the prize, new publishers (Finestres), magazines (Lime Kiln), collections (Doble Tinta, by Labrador Editores, or Comanegra Cómic, by Comanegra) and even a Catalan Comic Day that will celebrate its third edition on May 31st in Mataró, with talks by Kap, Mariel Soria and Albert Monteys, and an exhibition on the captain's insults.
List of winners of five editions
Pep Brocal was the winner of the first edition of the award with the comic strip Charity of the River, a biography of the communist militant and Soviet spy. Luis Pérez Ortiz won the second edition of the competition with a historical memory work about the Valley of the Fallen: Wall-hangersThe winner of the third edition was Glàfira Smith, who presented a shocking denunciation of sexual violence: Men are wolvesSusanna Martin took home the prize in the fourth edition of the contest, with her first-person reflection on non-binarity. American coffeeAnd the fifth edition was for Indians of Barcelona, by Ed Carosia and Lluc Silvestre.
