Colorado State Library

Denver, Colorado

About

91´«Ã½

The Institutional Library Development team (ILD) at the Colorado State Library (CSL) partners with Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC), providing resources and training to CDOC library staff to ensure that every offender gets a great library. The Sterling Correctional Facility (SCF) Libraries and partners will host two events titled “Where There is Art, There is Hope” by Professor William Kuskin. The LEAD With Comics program at SCF will use the Eisner Growth Grant funds to allow a new teacher to travel to Sterling, Colorado, and to enrich LEAD curriculum and the libraries’ collections with new graphic novels. Their project "Where There Is Art, There Is Hope: Graphic Novels and Literacy at the Sterling Correctional Facility Libraries" will foster growth of LEAD at SCF, will encourage literacy and reduce recidivism.

Awards Won

Title Year
Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table sheild logo and name above a yellow banner with the Will Eisner Graphic Novel Grants for Libraries text Will Eisner Graphic Novel Grant for Libraries - Growth Grant

91´«Ã½

The Will Eisner Graphic Novel Growth Grant will provide support to a library that would like to expand its existing graphic novel services and programs. This grant will encourage public awareness on the rise and importance of graphic literature, sequential art, and comics as a literary medium. The objective of the Will Eisner Graphic Novel Grants for Libraries is to facilitate library-generated programs and services that will promote graphic novels to library patrons and to the local community.

Will Eisner (1917-2005) was an acclaimed American comics writer, artist, teacher, and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of sequential art (a term he coined) and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential comic series, The Spirit; for his use of comics as an instructional medium; for his leading role in establishing the graphic novel as a form of literature with his 1978 groundbreaking graphic novel, A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories; for his 20 years of teaching at the School of Visual Arts, leading to his three textbooks. In a career that spanned nearly seven decades—from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics—Will Eisner was truly the “Father of the Graphic Novel.”

2017 - Recipient(s)