Announcing… Our Fall 2024 Lineup!
Our final Spring title (When the Lake Burns) is being released this month which means… it’s time to celebrate this gorgeous graphic novel created by Geneviève Bigué and translated by Luke Langille! But also… it’s time to start looking ahead at our fall titles.
With such a heavy spring focus on full-length (and in a couple of cases, supersized) graphic novels, we’re excited to announce a fall lineup of quick ‘n quirky reads. Our only full-length graphic novel this fall will be our fourth Emanata title, Survival of the Goodest by Marianne Boucher. The other titles? Five brand-new Conundrum 25 pocketbooks!
September
One of our first fall titles is a sweet story called Cousin Bear Comes to Visit by Métis artist Halie Finney. This tiny tale, which introduces us to Francis the Bear as she prepares to reunite with her cousin, reveals a small snippet of the mythology of characters that Finney has created and modelled after her own hometown and the people who reside there. She uses the tales that come from her imagined world to explore themes of family, nostalgia, and grief from Indigenous and small-town perspectives.
In another pocketbook dedicated to small-town life, writer and cartoonist Brandon Hicks offers a close-up tour of St Stephen, New Brunswick, as experienced by pandemic-era newcomer. In On the Border, Hicks collects the best snippets of the illustrating diary where he recorded all of the strange occurrences and social mores of this sleepy border town. Meet a large cast of idiosyncratic neighbours, wild animals and strange antagonists–and learn all there is to know about the local traditions, bizarre habits and the changing economy of a small East Coast community.
October
In October, we’re publishing the fourth title in our young adult imprint, Emanata. Created by Marianne Boucher (Talking to Strangers), Survival of the Goodest is an eco-adventure about a young messenger, Sable, who taps into ancient magic to defend her island’s animal inhabitants.
With support from her parents, Sable has trained for years to take up her position as the next Kerpathic, a messenger who travels through the dangerous forest to share news, medicine, and culture. When her father, the current Kerpathic, has an accident, Sable must step into her pre-destined role.
As her first mission goes awry, she wonders if she’s ready for this important but dangerous work. Until a young naturalist arrives on the island and sets off to capture a mysterious animal that’s never been seen on the mainland. Sable realizes that she can use her skills as a Kerpathic to defend the island’s animals and their way of life. But she quickly learns that she can’t do it alone.
After that, we’re back to Conundrum25 with a brand new book by Tahltan artist Cole Pauls. Lłēge zedle s̱on nes̱it’īn 
(Tahltan for we see stars only at night) is a surrealistic landscape of Tahltan shapes, culture and motifs. Originally created for the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s group show “Gutters are Elastic”, Pauls decided to expand the work into a full-length book.
Playing with the connection between land, regalia, performance and heritage, Pauls follows in the footsteps of Tiger Tateishi, Hironori Kikuchi and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas with his dreamlike narrative.
Then we’ve got Wanderer of the Wastes by PEI artist Tyler Landry, whose latest graphic novel, Old Caves, just won the Doug Wright Award for Best Small Press Book. In this pocketbook, a creature of waste named Shitman slogs interminably through a largely barren post-human landscape, encountering the last vestiges of life and seeking to understand them.
Finally, there’s It Really Is, by Montreal artist Cole Degenstein. In this Conundrum25 title, a Canadian winter begins with good intentions baking, flower arranging classes, and trips to the farmers market–before taking its toll. Despite his best and considerable efforts, 
something inside of Cole seems to go rotten every winter and stays that way until spring begins to peek up through the snow. This auto-fiction comic is based on the phenomenon of the winter slump, documenting the slow descent into a full-on winter-induced depression with humour, sensitivity, and talking geese.