Birth Story

Birth Story is a graphic memoir about pregnancy, birth, postpartum depression, and new motherhood as an artist. It explores the physical and psychologically altering birth process: pain, transformation, trauma, healing, and the window of time around the birthing body. Struggling to find representations of birth and postpartum depression in popular culture and art, the author interweaves other’s stories, friendship, and travel to help make sense of it all. This personal birth story is an effort to remember and contribute to sharing strength in all women’s voices.

“In Birth Story, Elisabeth Belliveau has captured the terror and confusion, but also the conflicted beauty, of new motherhood. The story is raw and intimate, unflinching in its depiction of childbirth and beyond. Nobody will tell you the truth like she has in these stunning pages.”  – Teresa Wong, author of Dear Scarlet and All Our Ordinary Stories

About the Author

Elisabeth Belliveau (she/her) is a visual artist and author, a descendant of Acadian, Scottish and Irish settlers. Originally from Antigonish, NS. Belliveau holds a BFA from AU Arts and an MFA from Concordia University. Her studio is currently based in Treaty Six, Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton AB, where she is an Associate Professor of Studio Arts at MacEwan University. Birth Story is her fifth graphic novel. Alongside zine and book work, Belliveau’s art practice engages moving image and sculpture through stop-motion animation, lenticular prints, film, and mobiles. Dedicated to sharing women’s stories, she employs diaristic and narrative approaches linking the personal and political. Belliveau has attended art residencies across Turtle Island, including Struts, KIAC, WSW NY, NFB/ONF, Banff Centre for the Arts, and abroad in Belgium and Japan.

Publication Details

ISBN 9781772621181
200 pages, b&w
Trade paperback
5.5 x 8.5 inches
April 2026