About this item
A poignant graphic memoir about the power of art to transform and heal after the death of a loved oneIn April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolor, ink, and colored pencil - for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love.
About the Author
Sarah Leavitt is a writer and cartoonist from Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her first book is a graphic memoir -- Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me (Canada: Freehand Books; UK: Jonathan Cape [Random House]; US: Skyhorse) . She has also published prose and comics in magazines, newspapers and anthologies.
Tangles will be published in the US in May 2012, and has been awarded a Kirkus Starred Review in advance of publication.
In the UK, there have been interviews and glowing reviews in The Guardian, The Independent, The Irish Independent, The Jewish Chronicle, The Glasgow Herald and more.
In Canada, Tangles was a finalist for the 2010 Writers' Trust of Canada Non-fiction Prize (the first graphic narrative to be a finalist in this category) ; the 2011 BC Book Prizes, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize; the Book Illustration category of the 2011 Alberta Book Publishing Awards; and the 2011 Alberta Readers' Choice Award. Tangles was included in the Globe and Mail's top 100 books of 2010 and Maisonneuve Magazine's top 10 for 2010, and won the CBC Bookie award for Best Comic or Graphic Novel.
Sarah discovered comics a little later than many cartoonists, when she started working on Tangles in her mid-thirties, and now her passion for comics knows no bounds. She developed an introduction to comics class for the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia and is just finishing teaching the course for the first time -- great fun so far.
More about Sarah and Tangles at www.sarahleavitt.com.
