Women power prevailed at the Costa awards 2012 with women winning all the five categories at the awards. Mary Talbot's "Dotter of Her Father's Eyes", a graphic biography took home the award in the biography section.

The 2012 Costa book awards - a first for the prestigious literary prize saw history being created yet again when women took home the awards in all five categories for the first time.

Mary Talbot's "Dotter of Her Father's Eyes", a graphic biography illustrated by her husband Bryan took home the award for biography of the year while Hilary Mantel won the novel award for Bring Up the Bodies. Francesca Segal took home the award for first novel for The Innocents and Kathleen Jamie's The Overhaul won the award poetry. Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon was named children's book of the year.

"It's wonderful," said Talbot on hearing that a woman won in every category. "It just shows how much female talent there is out there."

The couple knew they had won the award much before the ceremony and were delighted. However, the couple state that it wasn't an easy task keeping the news to themselves. "It has been really hard keeping quiet about it," said Mary. "We were astonished. Just being shortlisted was amazing and hearing we'd won the category was stunning. We're delighted of course, both personally - it's the first story I've had published - but also for the medium, I can't believe a graphic novel has won."

This is not the first time a graphic novel has won a prestigious award. In 1992, Art Spiegelman was awarded a Pulitzer for his work "Maus" and then in 2001 Chris Ware went on to win  the Guardian first book prize in 2001 for "Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth".

"It is a good thing for graphic novels as a whole," said Bryan Talbot. "Graphic novels are becoming increasingly accepted as a legitimate art form. We are living in the golden age of graphic novels. There are more and better comics being drawn today than ever in the history of the medium and there's such a range of styles of artwork, of genre and of subject matter."