Wild River Review: LIVE from the NYPL: Building Stories Together with Chris Ware and Zadie Smith

Shortly after receiving the Guardian First Book award in 2001 for Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, graphic novelist Chris Ware accompanied writer Zadie Smith (recipient of the prize in 2000 for White Teeth), to the Tate Britain to see Martin Creed's Work No. 227: the lights going on and off. As they stood in the empty room that would become light then dark then light again, Smith, in her mid-twenties at the time, turned to Ware and said, "Well, this is what's just won our premier art prize in England." He looked horrified and Smith empathized, especially since Ware had previously been explaining the craft and care involved in making a single page of a comic book, from faintly sketching the images and dialogue boxes in non-photo-blue pencil and then adding layer by layer of definition and color.