As seen over at Robot 6, today we have some great news: celebrated cartoonist Alison Bechdel has been awarded the incredibly prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant. One of 21 people awarded it this year, the grant offers Bechdel and the other recipients $625,000 distributed over five years quarterly with no strings attached, and is something given specifically to “extraordinarily creative people who inspure us all.”
For fans of her work, this is incredibly exciting news. As the cartoonist behind books like “Fun Home” and “Dykes to Watch Out For” (from which the famous ‘Bechdel test’, which puts films through a feminist prism and allows us to discuss the merits of female characters and tropes in storytelling, was born), the grant will essentially offer up Bechdel the opportunity through which to change how she works entirely. As Bechdel notes, she’ll be able to pay off debts and save for retirement, but she also now has the opportunity to use this money and opportunity to “take some risks, do something new — to really plunge into my work,” as she tells the LA Times.
Take a look below for Bechdel’s video from the MacArthur Fund going over her career and why she deserves the grant, and congratulations are due as well. It’s a tremendous vote of confidence in a fantastic cartoonist, and as a fan of her work I for one can not wait to see what she does next.
