Asia Alfasi

Asia's self-portrait

Asia Alfasi is a British Manga artist. She was born in Libya (April 20, 1984) and moved to Scotland at the age of 8. Since then, her family moved to Birmingham, England and lives there to this day. Her works focus around a synthesis of her exposure to Muslim, Libyan, and British influences.

She contributed to the Best book of new Manga and has the first part of her twin autobiography (Native Narratives), featuring the young adventures of a girl first in Libya, then Scotland respectively is being published by Bloomsbury in late 2007.

 
Asia is one of the hottest up-and-coming young artists in England, with numerous awards under her belt. Her career was spring boarded by the 'StripSearch' competition run by Hi8us. The entrants had to design a character, and the prize was a place on a course run by professionals in the field, such as John McCrea and Hunt Emerson. In Asia's own words:

 
"There was no way I was going to pass it up, I was just desperate. I self-delivered my entry an hour and a half before the deadline."

"I was chosen along with around 12 other guys from a pool of about 100. From that, I learned how to better things such as my storytelling, inking, page structure, as well as being introduced to comic conventions for the first time. Also, it culminated in the publishing of a small comic entitled Grab where all of us (the group) had two pages or so. It was my first ever published pages."

 Since Asia first started creating comics professionally in 2003 she has released two major works (and oodles of smaller ones!), the aforementioned Mammoth book of best new Manga and the 'Non-savvy non-commuter' -- a short, semi-autobiographical work as part of the project Thin Cities, the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Piccadilly station's opening. It was on display from 15 December 2006 to 31 April 2007.