The Mahmoud Kahil Award
The Mahmoud Kahil Award is an award program under the Rada and Mutaz Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies at the American University of Beirut. The award aims to promote comics, editorial cartoons and illustration in the Arab world through the recognition of the rich talent and creative achievement of comics artists, cartoonists, and illustrators in the region.
This program was established at AUB in 2014 upon the initiative of Mr. Mutaz Sawaf to honor and perpetuate the legacy of the late Mahmoud Kahil, one of the leading cartoonists and caricaturists of the Arab World, and a former AUB graduate.
The finalists in the various categories of the award are chosen by a select panel of international and regional jury members who are invited to view the work and select the final winners, who are celebrated during an annual award ceremony in Beirut, along with the launch of the annual award book and exhibition.
The Center’s first call for submissions was launched in early 2015, receiving an overwhelming number of artworks from approximately 300 artists and 11 Arab nations, moving up to 16 countries by the 4th year.
Artists from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Sudan, UAE & Lebanon have participated throughout the past 5 years.
The diverse range of submitted artworks, and the professional caliber retained over the past few years is exemplary of the immensely rich talent in the region, and the qualified artists working in the field.
The Rada and Mutaz Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies at AUB
The Rada and Mutaz Sawaf Center for Arab Comics Studies at the American University of Beirut is an academic body that acts as a hub for the critical study of Comics art from the Arab World. The Center, uniquely positioned in Beirut, aims to promote the research, teaching, and production of this artform, while building a collection of archival and contemporary Arab comics, in order to preserve its heritage, and embrace this medium and its canons as an integral feature of contemporary Arab art, while aspiring to place it on a global stage. Established in November 2022 and inaugurated in April 2023, the Center was made possible through a $5 million irrevocable trust, generously donated by AUB alumnus and trustee Mutaz Sawaf (BArch ’74) and his wife Rada Sawaf, that will provide perpetual financial support for the center.
As part of its mission, the center will continue to organize the prestigious annual pan-Arab Mahmoud Kahil Award ceremony, award book and exhibition, honoring, promoting and showcasing talents from the region to a wide audience. The Center also organizes an annual thematic Comics symposium, curated exhibitions, course on comics, workshops, lectures and master classes by leading regional and international comics artists. The Center additionally aims to publish referential resources, monographs, comics anthologies, and supporting historical and analytical studies and documentation of past and present comics in the Arab world, while aiming to facilitate outreach, collaboration and networking with other centers, cultural institutions, regional Comics platforms, and practicing artists of the Arab world.
Categories & Prizes
Artists from the entire Arab world including; Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen are eligible and encouraged to submit their published work in one of these categories:
Editorial Cartoons
$10,000
Also known as political cartoons, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities contain some level of political or social commentary
Graphic Novel
$10,000
A complete visual narrative of over 30 pages at the very least
Comics
$5,000
Includes all forms of comics or visual narratives from comic strips to one page comics, up to 20 pages
Graphic Illustration
$5,000
Includes all forms of Editorial illustrations, infographics, or book illustrations geared to an adult audience
Children′s Book Illustration
$5,000
Illustrations for children’s books
Additionally, Two Honorary Awards selected by the jury are announced every year:
The Lifetime Achievement Award
Recognizing an artist with outstanding dedication and service of over 25 years in the fields of Comics, illustration or cartoons in the region.
The Comics Guardian Award
Recognizing those who have extensively supported comics and cartoons in the Arab world through preserving, collecting, promoting, publishing, teaching or exhibiting this Art, and thereby contributing to the cultural heritage of the region.
Candidates for this award may be:
- Comics Festivals and festival founders
- Comics Publishers
- Comics Collectors
- Online Comics portals
- Comics Collectors
- Comics Awards programs
- Educators that have initiated programs on comics teachings and workshops, or have taught comics
- Arab Comics Historiographers
- Exhibitions
- Galleries who have hosted or sold comics artists
Advisory Board Members
Current
Mutaz Sawaf
Founder & Renowned Businessman
2014 – Current
Mutaz Sawaf is an AUB trustee since 2014. He graduated from AUB ‘74 with a degree in Architectural Engineering, and successfully achieved an extensive network of both private and public projects in the Middle East, and the Gulf.
He is a comics connoisseur and an accomplished illustrator as well as an avid collector of comics. Sawaf established the company “Tosh Fesh” with the aim of encouraging young Arab artists by publishing their works and gaining exposure in the Arab world.
Rami Khouri
Editor, Author & Journalist
2022 – Current
Rami George Khouri is an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author; Journalist-in-Residence and co-director of global engagement at the American University of Beirut (AUB); and non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2006, he launched and directed the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB. He was previously the executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, and editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times, and was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006.
He teaches or lectures annually at the American University of Beirut and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard,
Mount Holyoke, Princeton, Syracuse, Villanova, Oklahoma, and Stanford universities. He also serves on the Joint Advisory Board of the Northwestern
University Journalism School in Doha, Qatar.
He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.
Ricardo Karam
Editor, Author & Journalist
2022 – Current
Ricardo Karam (BS ‘91) is an AUB Alumni and Tristee since 2023, a Lebanese television presenter, producer, talk-show host, author, public speaker, and advocate for Arab social causes. He founded Ricardo Karam Production Company, which produces formats for TV and online platforms, ranging from documentaries to series, talk-shows, and more. In 2010, he created the TAKREEM Foundation, which celebrates the achievements of changemakers and seeks to reshape narratives linked to the Arab world. In 2018 and 2019, he respectively founded TAKminds, a platform of connectivity that organizes forums and conferences and empowers emerging talents, and TAKREEM AMERICA, aimed at strengthening ties between Arab Americans and their motherlands. In 2020, Karam launched his podcast, Conversations with Ricardo Karam, and in 2021, he founded Peacomms, a coaching and public speaking training program designed to empower public figures and executives. Karam is a graduate of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Agro-Alimentaires (BS in Chemical Engineering ‘93) and LAU (MBA ‘95).
Paul Gravett
Global Comics Culture Historian & Activist
2022 – Current
Paul Gravett is a London-based writer, historian, curator and lecturer specialising in international comics art. With over forty years of experience in publishing and promoting comics, he also directed the London comics festival, Comica.
He has written, co-written, edited or contributed to more than twenty books on comics and has curated exhibitions at institutions such as The British Library, the National Comics Centre in Angoulême, The Centre Pompidou, and The Barbican Centre, where he organized the first exhibition of Asian Comics, currently touring museums in the USA.
His upcoming projects include curating for the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, opening in London 2026, and contributing to a new museum of graphic narrative in Brussels. More details can be found at www.paulgravett.com.