Announcing… Our Spring 2024 Lineup!
Spring is still a few months away but we just couldn’t wait that long to tell you all about this incredible upcoming collection of graphic novels.
April
First up is Degrees of Separation by Alison McCreesh. Over the course of a decade, McCreesh lived, worked, and travelled north of the 60th parallel. Through a combination of autobiographical stories, drawings and sketches, Degrees of Separation offers an intimate and understated glimpse of the North as Alison experienced it. From frigid days spent killing time while stranded in the High Arctic, to the challenges of raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, it is one young woman’s personal experience of both passing through and of setting down roots.
Joe Sacco said, “The tension between free-spirited off-grid living and prosaic adult responsibility runs through Alison McCreesh’s tender and loving ode to the people and landscapes of the Far North.”
Our second April title is the manga-style novella, Food School by Jade Armstrong. In Food School, a twenty-something college dropout enrolls in a full-time outpatient program for eating disorder recovery. As they change their relationship with food, their relationships with people change, too.
This title has also attracted some advance attention, with Hana Chatani saying, “Funny and informative, Jade effortlessly hits the sweet spot between silly and sincere to deliver a delightful treat despite its heavy topic. Grab a snack, a drink and definitely grab Food School!”
May
In May, we’ve got The Field by Dave Lapp. This memoir has received extremely high praise from Chester Brown, who said, “This might be the best story about childhood that I’ve ever read (or heard). It’s a masterpiece.” The Field immerses readers in a small town on the verge of summer vacation. Developers have begun digging up a field on the edges of town, presenting endless nooks and crannies for local kids to explore, while the town’s adults remain focused on their fractured marriages and neighbourly resentments.
Lapp’s new memoir unpacks a long, hazy 1970s summer and reveals that when we look beyond nostalgia, childhood is complicated—and rarely innocent.
Hot on the heels of The Field is Cheryl by Jillian Fleck, a story about a woman who comes out as a lesbian a little later than most, and attempts to navigate those complexities–along with a few others–by attempting to reach total spiritual enlightenment.
As Cheryl falls further down the New Age wellness industrial complex however, the world turns out to be a lot weirder and sicker than she could have ever imagined. Now Cheryl is forced to confront that not only is it not all about her, but that she might have some part to play in making it better.
We’ll also be releasing just one Conundrum25 title this season (Conundrum25 fans, stay tuned for Fall 2024): Just Happy to See You by Shea Proulx.
Just Happy To See You is a mix of bizarre comedy and a captivating autobiographical sequential art in which a breadcrumb trail of punchlines connects the dots between singing bougainvillea, poorly thought-out pandemic guidelines, and murderous clones. Psychedelic visual-narratives coupled with side-splitting punchlines will eventually leave you wondering: why did Shea Proulx’s youngest spent so much time huffing laughing gas in 2021? The answer is simple: it was just that kind of year.
June
Just before summer, we’ve got a new young adult title called When the Lake Burns, written and illustrated by Geneviève Bigué and translated from the original French by Luke Langille. When a local lake catches fire, a group of teens set out to see the spectacle for themselves—but not everything goes as planned. An old local legend re-emerges, and a group of local teens decide to find out if the stories are true. Deep in the woods, one of the teens shares a secret so shocking that the group splits up—and the real nightmare begins.
Originally published by Front Froid as Parfois les lacs brûlent, this book has already been recognized by a number of awards including Prix des libraires du Québec 2023, Prix Bédéis Causa 2023, and Prix du Salon du livre de Trois-Rivières 2023.