Will McPhail: Drawing Inspiration

The drawing style of Will McPhail will be instantly recognisable to readers of the New Yorker or Private Eye, where his cartoons are regularly published. Now the cartoonist has turned his hand to his first full-length graphic novel, IN, and it’s set to win him scores of new fans. McPhail gains much of the inspiration for his characters and conversations from the coffee shops of his home city of Edinburgh. ‘It's my job to capture all different walks of life, the idiosyncrasies of life, and Edinburgh and Scotland has got a plethora of different classes and niches of people,’ he has said. His graphic novel tells the story of a young illustrator, Nick, who struggles to connect with people, drifting through life, and coffee shops, in a world of black and white. It’s only when he learns to stop performing and speak about the things that really matter that the colourful worlds of the people he meets are revealed to him. McPhail illustrates his point live on stage at the 2021 Edinburgh International Book Festival.