Nate Powell's graphic novel Swallow Me Whole (Top Shelf Productions, ISBN: 9781603090339) has been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Swallow Me Whole is one of five official finalists in the category of Young Adult Fiction, and this makes it the first graphic novel to be up for the prize since Art Spiegelman's MAUS won the Fiction category in 1992.

Powell explained he was “honored just to be considered” and was “dizzy” at having his book “placed in the same sentence as MAUS."

Although Swallow Me Whole is not “exclusively” for young adult readers, it does focus on the silent grey corners of adolescence. The book follows two teenage stepsiblings, Ruth and Perry, as they maneuver through the turmoil of school, family, and suburban anxiety.

Life is made more tedious by insect armies, swirling visions, and haunting voices without origin.

"To be a young person is to be surrounded at all times by frightening transition and the terror of losing touch with a safe and familiar world," says Powell. "Sometimes the only salvation from that terror is in what a teenager can create for themselves."

The book also received an Ignatz Award from the 2008 Small Press Expo. Additionally, Douglas Wolk has written in the New York Times that "Powell's flowing, impressionistic artwork, with its ravenous expanses of negative space, swirls the reader's perspective through his characters' perceptions and back out again."

Nate Powell will be attending Seattle's Emerald City ComiCon (April 4-5) and the SPACE Expo in Columbus, OH (April 18-19) before traveling to Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Prize ceremony on Friday, April 24. The ceremony serves as the kickoff for the LA Times Festival of Books (April 25-26), where Nate will be a special guest hosted by Hi De Ho Comics all weekend.

A review from Publishers Weekly is available here.

Check out the interior pages below!