Making James Joyce's Life into a Graphic Novel. An Interview with Alfonso Zapico

Alfonso Zapico was born in Blimea, Asturias, Spain, in 1981. He started working as a professional illustrator and cartoonist in 2006 and has since published four graphic novels: La guerre du professeur Bertenev (2006), set in the Crimean War; Cafe Budapest (2008), about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Dublines (2011), a biography of James Joyce, and La ruta Joyce (2011), a kind of 'making of' of Dublines. His works have received several prestigious awards and been published in Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Germany and Ireland, where The O'Brien Press released the English version of Dublines, James Joyce. Portrait of a Dubliner, last May. Just a few days before, the Niemeyer Center in Aviles, Asturias, opened Pasos encontrados. Un viaje dibujado de Alfonso Zapico, an exhibition focused on his career and, more particularly, on Dublines and La ruta Joyce. He will soon be publishing his fifth graphic novel, El otro mar, about Vasco Nunez de Balboa and the expedition that led to the European discovery of the Pacific Ocean in 1513. We interviewed Zapico at the Niemeyer Center on June 29th, 2013.