Lecturer in Illustration is speaker at Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature

University of Gloucestershire lecturer and graphic novelist and illustrator Fumio Obata is among the speakers at the 2022 Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature in Dubai.

Launched in 2009, the Festival has established itself as one of the world’s leading international literary events, providing attendees with opportunities to meet and listen to world-famous authors and attend literary debates and workshops.

Fumio, who was born in Tokyo and moved to the UK in 1991, is a Lecturer in Illustration on the master’s degree in Illustration degree and BA (Hons) Illustration degree at the University.

Inspired by both Japanese and European aesthetics, he is a specialist in sequential image design and writes stories and adapts existing scripts for comic books and graphic novels.

One of his graphic novels, Just So Happens, has won critical acclaim and was translated and published in eight different countries.

Fumio said: “I’m very honoured to be appearing at three events this weekend at the 2022 Emirates Literature Festival Dubai.

“I will be attending two discussion panels with renowned authors from all over the world and I will be running a comic making workshop based on the idea of Japanese animism. I’m very much looking forward to meeting a new audience after the long hiatus.”

In his first event at this year’s Festival, Fumio will tomorrow appear alongside actor and comedian Ben Miller and award-winning authors Erin Entrada Kelly and SK Ali at a talk entitled Greatest Hits of Children’s Lit.

On Saturday, he and Booker Prize-nominated Avni Doshi are on the panel for Bigger Picture: Storytelling Through Words and Art, while on Sunday Fumio will be hosting a workshop entitled Animism and Story Making in Manga.