Kateřina Čupová, Karel Čapek

Kateřina Čupová (b. 1992, Ostrava) is a Czech animator and comic book artist, and a graduate from the renowned Department of Animation at the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín. Many of her works have been published in magazines and comic anthologies. Her webcomic The Author’s Apprentice was published in print following a successful Kickstarter campaign. She won the Muriel Award for a short graphic story and was also nominated for her R.U.R this year’s comic book adaptation. Her eye-catching, cartoon-like style is firmly rooted in decades of prized Czech animation.

Karel Čapek (1890-1938) was a key figure of Czech literature in the interwar period as a prolific journalist, fiction writer, playwright, translator and critic. Among his best-known works are novels The White Disease, Krakatit and War with the Newts, and plays such as R.U.R, Pictures from the Insects’ Life and The Mother. He was close to his brother Josef, with whom he co-wrote many of his works. Alongside the first Czechoslovak president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, he produced the popular collection Talks with T. G. Masaryk. Karel Čapek used his writing to reflect on the looming political threat. He himself did not live to see World War II,  though his brother was eventually murdered in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He was a seven-time aspirant for the Nobel Prize for Literature.