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Sarah Leavitt writes both prose and comics. Her writing has appeared in Geist, The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Review, The Georgia Straight and Xtra West. Leavitt has written short documentaries for Definitely Not the Opera on CBC Radio, and her non-fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Nobody's Mother (Heritage, 2006) and Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009). She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and continues on with the program teaching comics classes. Tangles: A story about Alzheimer's, my mother and me (Freehand 2010 $23.96) is her first book and it was the first graphic novel to be shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Award. It was also a Globe & Mail "Top 100 Book of 2010" and the winner of the 2011 CBC Bookie Award for Best Comic or Graphic Novel. (More on this below in bottom paragraph.)
Sarah Leavitt's second graphic novel, Agnes, Murderess (Freehand, 2019) is based on the folk legend of a roadhouse owner, madam and serial killer, Agnes McVee, who reputedly owned a roadhouse in 108 Mile House during the Cariboo Gold Rush. Inspired by the unverified allegations about this madam, Leavitt imagined a whole new story for her beginning with Agnes's birth on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. The power of Agnes' grandmother, a witch feared by the islanders, grows stronger especially after the early death of Agnes' mother. She escapes to London then British Columbia but continues to be haunted by her grandmother wherever she goes. Leavitt has put a decidedly queer twist on the story, moving from women’s passionate friendships in the gardens of St John's Wood to female relationships in the Canadian wild.
The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival and Freehand Books presented the launch for Agnes, Murderess (Freehand $29.95) with a reading, talk and book signing on Thursday, September 26, 2019 from 7-10 pm at Lost + Found Café (33 West Hastings St).
Agnes McVee is said to have murdered over fifty people, stealing their gold and burning their bodies in the fireplace. When Leavitt first came across her story in 2009 on a trip to 108 Mile, BC, she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and had nightmares about this mysterious murderess. She began filling sketchbooks, and a decade-long project began. Leavitt discovered the first written record of Agnes did not appear until the 1970s, when an amateur historian self-published a guide to buried treasure in B.C. Other evidence that Agnes existed is scant so Leavitt felt free to re-imagine Agnes’ story: her immigration to Canada from an isolated Scottish Island; her complex entanglement with shiny things; and her terrifying grandmother, Gormul, who haunted Agnes’ dreams and waking life. The book also conveys the pre-conceived notion held by settlers that the “new world” would be free of ghosts and history. Cumulatively, Agnes, Murderess is a tale of ghosts and murder, friendship and betrayal, love and greed, fate and choice.
Sarah Leavitt has earned international acclaim as a writer and cartoonist. Tangles: A story about Alzheimer’s, my mother, and me, was published in Canada, the US, UK, Germany, France and Korea and a feature-length animation went into development. In 2010, it became the first work of graphic literature to be a finalist for any of the prizes administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. It was also a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2010, the winner of the 2011 CBC Bookie Award for Best Comic or Graphic Novel, a finalist for the 2011 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award and a finalist for the 2011 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Leavitt’s prose and comics have appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in Canada, the US and the UK. Sarah teaches comics classes in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.
For more information, go to www.freehand-books.com or www.sarahleavitt.com
***
Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love
by Sarah Leavitt
(Arsenal Pulp Press $27.95)
Review by Sonja Pinto (BCBW 2024)
Nestled by the side of a creek in North Vancouver, Sarah Leavitt watches her partner of twenty-two years die. They are surrounded by loved ones and a medical practitioner who administers the fatal IV injection. Donimo, Sarah’s partner, has chosen Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) after decades of living with chronic pain and several untreatable medical conditions.
Something, Not Nothing, a true story documenting the author’s grief, begins in Donimo’s wake. “After her death, I continued living, which surprised me,” writes Leavitt. This graphic novel feels hauntingly intimate; akin to reading someone’s diary at their most vulnerable moments. Leavitt’s artistic style is free flowing, raw, shaky and sometimes silly. The book captures her process of grief, and she notes that the panels appear in roughly chronological order of their creation.
The first several pages are entirely black and white and made with dark, chaotic scribbles and words floating in and out or being obscured by other markings. “HOW,” Leavitt asks, “and HOW” “and HOW”. This cry appears over and over again, documenting Leavitt’s raw disbelief: “WHEN SHE GOT UP THE LAST MORNING WENT TO BED THE NIGHT BEFORE MADE SURE HER HAIR HOW? HOW?” These questions summarize the early days of grief—certain words and phrases appear again and again. The word “grievous” appears standalone in several panels, first sidelong and struck through, then in cursive, then in its terrible context: “You must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition.”
The panels eventually begin to piece together the period of time before Donimo’s death. In one panel, a ghastly face with black eyes and tears falling pokes out from the bottom left with text in a conversation bubble: “I told Donimo I would do some research for her.” Tears from the face drip into the panels below. One panel on the same page shows a figure curled in the fetal position surrounded by markings that resemble flames.
Before accessing MAiD, Donimo deals with the excruciating series of medical rejections: “Another doctor said no.” After years of failed attempts at treatment to manage her pain, Donimo is approved for MAiD. “Part of me had thought maybe once you knew you had the option it would be enough,” admits Leavitt. Two panels depict Donimo, her eyes dazed spirals, saying only “I’m sorry Sarah.”
“I can only write about the day she died if I walk up to it sideways, trick myself a little,” confides Leavitt. The trick, coloured bright yellow, involves the memory of picking up her dog’s poop in the minutes after Donimo’s death.
Something, Not Nothing is a striking queer love story. Leavitt writes about “The night we met May (1998) at a queer sex show at a strip club, you in this sort of ‘70s faggy glam outfit, glowing” and “the joy of it / the peace / the brightness.” Leavitt recalls their dog Jackson snuggling in his favourite place—Donimo’s armpit—and how Donimo was a motorcycle rider who “wore men’s clothing like a dandy.”
Some panels depict vignettes from the months and years prior to Donimo’s death. One describes how Leavitt would read Moominland Midwinter to Donimo by the light of a headlamp so as not to aggravate Donimo’s sensitivity to light. “I’m frightened. We might not finish the book in time,” writes Leavitt.
In the face of tremendous sorrow, Something, Not Nothing balances the heaviness with moments of refreshing anger and humour: “Fuck the rocks and their ongoing / never-ending lives.” Some pages are devoted to lumpy horses: “Just ask me. I will always provide horses … The horses don’t change anything. Everyone who died is still dead.”
This humour helps Leavitt come to terms with continuing to age without her partner. “My butt keeps getting older,” writes Leavitt in a page titled “fuck.” The page displays various body parts, wrinkles, hairs and unfinished thoughts. “Remember when we” reads one panel, paired with a teary face turned upwards. “And we” reads the next, the face now sly with a smug grin and sideways glance, as if recalling a salacious memory. “I don’t even know,” the last panel reads.
Some pages are devoted entirely to colour and shapes, bereft of text, a raw processing of emotional experience. One such page, filled with grey and yellow watercolours, is titled “Stare into space.” Other pages show yellow, pink and blue strokes bleeding into each other. “What if I could tell you everything with colours and no words? bright yellow? stupid purple?” asks Leavitt. Colour conveys what words cannot. At times, Leavitt invites the reader to imagine with her. “While we are waiting, I wanted to ask, do you think any of the following are possible?” referring to the following array of colours and shapes that offer the reader a space for contemplation.
As time goes on, Leavitt writes “of life continuing. / Of dishes and dog walks and workout videos.” How does one continue to wake up every day after someone so significant has passed? For Leavitt, the answer is simple and hilariously universal: “I get out of bed eventually because there is coffee and Wordle.”
As time passes, the shape of Leavitt’s grief changes. “It’s not like I see your ghost,” she writes, “It’s not empty space / It’s not you / It is you.” This amorphous feeling follows Leavitt, but the small delights increase over time as Leavitt recalls “my feet in warm socks in my own kitchen, chopping onions, grateful for every bit of peace.”
Despite the experience of heavy grief that Something, Not Nothing requests readers to digest, this book will leave you gasping with laughter and clutching your loved ones close by the last page. A visual masterpiece, this is a book that needs to be held and touched to truly be appreciated.
9781551529516
Sonja Pinto is a writer, photographer and printmaker. They reside on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples (Victoria, BC).
***
2024 GRAPHIC NOVEL ROUNDUP:
Originally created for the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s group show, Gutters are Elastic, in 2023, Cole Pauls expanded his work into a full-length comic, we see stars only at night (Conundrum Press $10). Coles plays with the connection between land, regalia, performance and heritage, following in the footsteps of Tiger Tateishi, Hironori Kikuchi and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas with his surrealistic narrative. 9781772621006
***
Teresa Wong’s graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95) follows the obstacles a daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves. 9781551529493
***
ROTH Book 1: Wheetago War (Renegade $29.99) by Tlicho Dene author Richard Van Camp with art by Christopher Shy bills itself as an “Indigenous Walking Dead!” The story tells of the feared Wheetago, who have returned, using their powers to call back the Na acho, cannibalistic giants once banished by Dene deities. Forming an uneasy alliance, a mother, her young son and a desperate band of convicts fight to survive the Wheetago horrors now awakened. 9781989754221
***
Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, a Graphic Novel (Beacon $24.95) provides a fly-on-the-wall view of a revolt and conspiracy by the enslaved and indentured in 18th century New York City and highlights cooperation among races and classes that transcended the social order of its time. This is the third book created by David Lester, Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle. Their two previous books, Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and Under The Banner of King Death, have been published in 11 international editions (and 6 languages). 9780807012550
***
South Korean comic artist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days (Drawn & Quarterly $29.95) centres on an unconventional family trying to build trust, not only with each other, but with their neighbours. Yuna never wanted to adopt a dog. But with her partner in mourning—and in need of a boost in morale—she gives in to his request, and surprisingly she becomes inseparable from the puppy. Translated by Janet Hong, a writer based in Vancouver. 781770467316
***
A finalist for a 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. The Gulf (Tundra $20.99) by Adam de Souza follows a group of high schoolers graduating into a world they do not understand. As a cure for their frustration, they run away from home to an island commune that promises a way of living that makes sense to them. For ages 14 and up.
9781774880739
***
Keeping it real for ages 8 to 12 is Gamerville (HarperAlley $15.99) by Johnnie Christmas. A contemporary exploration of the importance of human connections when a video gamer’s championship aspirations are dashed after his parents send him to Camp Reset, where electronics are forbidden and he is forced to socialize, eat healthy and spend
time outside. 9780063056817
BOOKS:
Tangles: A story about Alzheimer's, my mother and me (Freehand 2010) $23.96
Agnes, Murderess (Freehand 2019) $29.95 978-1-988298-47-4
[BCBW 2019]
Sarah Leavitt's second graphic novel, Agnes, Murderess (Freehand, 2019) is based on the folk legend of a roadhouse owner, madam and serial killer, Agnes McVee, who reputedly owned a roadhouse in 108 Mile House during the Cariboo Gold Rush. Inspired by the unverified allegations about this madam, Leavitt imagined a whole new story for her beginning with Agnes's birth on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. The power of Agnes' grandmother, a witch feared by the islanders, grows stronger especially after the early death of Agnes' mother. She escapes to London then British Columbia but continues to be haunted by her grandmother wherever she goes. Leavitt has put a decidedly queer twist on the story, moving from women’s passionate friendships in the gardens of St John's Wood to female relationships in the Canadian wild.
The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival and Freehand Books presented the launch for Agnes, Murderess (Freehand $29.95) with a reading, talk and book signing on Thursday, September 26, 2019 from 7-10 pm at Lost + Found Café (33 West Hastings St).
Agnes McVee is said to have murdered over fifty people, stealing their gold and burning their bodies in the fireplace. When Leavitt first came across her story in 2009 on a trip to 108 Mile, BC, she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and had nightmares about this mysterious murderess. She began filling sketchbooks, and a decade-long project began. Leavitt discovered the first written record of Agnes did not appear until the 1970s, when an amateur historian self-published a guide to buried treasure in B.C. Other evidence that Agnes existed is scant so Leavitt felt free to re-imagine Agnes’ story: her immigration to Canada from an isolated Scottish Island; her complex entanglement with shiny things; and her terrifying grandmother, Gormul, who haunted Agnes’ dreams and waking life. The book also conveys the pre-conceived notion held by settlers that the “new world” would be free of ghosts and history. Cumulatively, Agnes, Murderess is a tale of ghosts and murder, friendship and betrayal, love and greed, fate and choice.
Sarah Leavitt has earned international acclaim as a writer and cartoonist. Tangles: A story about Alzheimer’s, my mother, and me, was published in Canada, the US, UK, Germany, France and Korea and a feature-length animation went into development. In 2010, it became the first work of graphic literature to be a finalist for any of the prizes administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. It was also a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2010, the winner of the 2011 CBC Bookie Award for Best Comic or Graphic Novel, a finalist for the 2011 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award and a finalist for the 2011 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Leavitt’s prose and comics have appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in Canada, the US and the UK. Sarah teaches comics classes in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.
For more information, go to www.freehand-books.com or www.sarahleavitt.com
***
Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love
by Sarah Leavitt
(Arsenal Pulp Press $27.95)
Review by Sonja Pinto (BCBW 2024)
Nestled by the side of a creek in North Vancouver, Sarah Leavitt watches her partner of twenty-two years die. They are surrounded by loved ones and a medical practitioner who administers the fatal IV injection. Donimo, Sarah’s partner, has chosen Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) after decades of living with chronic pain and several untreatable medical conditions.
Something, Not Nothing, a true story documenting the author’s grief, begins in Donimo’s wake. “After her death, I continued living, which surprised me,” writes Leavitt. This graphic novel feels hauntingly intimate; akin to reading someone’s diary at their most vulnerable moments. Leavitt’s artistic style is free flowing, raw, shaky and sometimes silly. The book captures her process of grief, and she notes that the panels appear in roughly chronological order of their creation.
The first several pages are entirely black and white and made with dark, chaotic scribbles and words floating in and out or being obscured by other markings. “HOW,” Leavitt asks, “and HOW” “and HOW”. This cry appears over and over again, documenting Leavitt’s raw disbelief: “WHEN SHE GOT UP THE LAST MORNING WENT TO BED THE NIGHT BEFORE MADE SURE HER HAIR HOW? HOW?” These questions summarize the early days of grief—certain words and phrases appear again and again. The word “grievous” appears standalone in several panels, first sidelong and struck through, then in cursive, then in its terrible context: “You must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition.”
The panels eventually begin to piece together the period of time before Donimo’s death. In one panel, a ghastly face with black eyes and tears falling pokes out from the bottom left with text in a conversation bubble: “I told Donimo I would do some research for her.” Tears from the face drip into the panels below. One panel on the same page shows a figure curled in the fetal position surrounded by markings that resemble flames.
Before accessing MAiD, Donimo deals with the excruciating series of medical rejections: “Another doctor said no.” After years of failed attempts at treatment to manage her pain, Donimo is approved for MAiD. “Part of me had thought maybe once you knew you had the option it would be enough,” admits Leavitt. Two panels depict Donimo, her eyes dazed spirals, saying only “I’m sorry Sarah.”
“I can only write about the day she died if I walk up to it sideways, trick myself a little,” confides Leavitt. The trick, coloured bright yellow, involves the memory of picking up her dog’s poop in the minutes after Donimo’s death.
Something, Not Nothing is a striking queer love story. Leavitt writes about “The night we met May (1998) at a queer sex show at a strip club, you in this sort of ‘70s faggy glam outfit, glowing” and “the joy of it / the peace / the brightness.” Leavitt recalls their dog Jackson snuggling in his favourite place—Donimo’s armpit—and how Donimo was a motorcycle rider who “wore men’s clothing like a dandy.”
Some panels depict vignettes from the months and years prior to Donimo’s death. One describes how Leavitt would read Moominland Midwinter to Donimo by the light of a headlamp so as not to aggravate Donimo’s sensitivity to light. “I’m frightened. We might not finish the book in time,” writes Leavitt.
In the face of tremendous sorrow, Something, Not Nothing balances the heaviness with moments of refreshing anger and humour: “Fuck the rocks and their ongoing / never-ending lives.” Some pages are devoted to lumpy horses: “Just ask me. I will always provide horses … The horses don’t change anything. Everyone who died is still dead.”
This humour helps Leavitt come to terms with continuing to age without her partner. “My butt keeps getting older,” writes Leavitt in a page titled “fuck.” The page displays various body parts, wrinkles, hairs and unfinished thoughts. “Remember when we” reads one panel, paired with a teary face turned upwards. “And we” reads the next, the face now sly with a smug grin and sideways glance, as if recalling a salacious memory. “I don’t even know,” the last panel reads.
Some pages are devoted entirely to colour and shapes, bereft of text, a raw processing of emotional experience. One such page, filled with grey and yellow watercolours, is titled “Stare into space.” Other pages show yellow, pink and blue strokes bleeding into each other. “What if I could tell you everything with colours and no words? bright yellow? stupid purple?” asks Leavitt. Colour conveys what words cannot. At times, Leavitt invites the reader to imagine with her. “While we are waiting, I wanted to ask, do you think any of the following are possible?” referring to the following array of colours and shapes that offer the reader a space for contemplation.
As time goes on, Leavitt writes “of life continuing. / Of dishes and dog walks and workout videos.” How does one continue to wake up every day after someone so significant has passed? For Leavitt, the answer is simple and hilariously universal: “I get out of bed eventually because there is coffee and Wordle.”
As time passes, the shape of Leavitt’s grief changes. “It’s not like I see your ghost,” she writes, “It’s not empty space / It’s not you / It is you.” This amorphous feeling follows Leavitt, but the small delights increase over time as Leavitt recalls “my feet in warm socks in my own kitchen, chopping onions, grateful for every bit of peace.”
Despite the experience of heavy grief that Something, Not Nothing requests readers to digest, this book will leave you gasping with laughter and clutching your loved ones close by the last page. A visual masterpiece, this is a book that needs to be held and touched to truly be appreciated.
9781551529516
Sonja Pinto is a writer, photographer and printmaker. They reside on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples (Victoria, BC).
***
2024 GRAPHIC NOVEL ROUNDUP:
Originally created for the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s group show, Gutters are Elastic, in 2023, Cole Pauls expanded his work into a full-length comic, we see stars only at night (Conundrum Press $10). Coles plays with the connection between land, regalia, performance and heritage, following in the footsteps of Tiger Tateishi, Hironori Kikuchi and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas with his surrealistic narrative. 9781772621006
***
Teresa Wong’s graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95) follows the obstacles a daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves. 9781551529493
***
ROTH Book 1: Wheetago War (Renegade $29.99) by Tlicho Dene author Richard Van Camp with art by Christopher Shy bills itself as an “Indigenous Walking Dead!” The story tells of the feared Wheetago, who have returned, using their powers to call back the Na acho, cannibalistic giants once banished by Dene deities. Forming an uneasy alliance, a mother, her young son and a desperate band of convicts fight to survive the Wheetago horrors now awakened. 9781989754221
***
Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, a Graphic Novel (Beacon $24.95) provides a fly-on-the-wall view of a revolt and conspiracy by the enslaved and indentured in 18th century New York City and highlights cooperation among races and classes that transcended the social order of its time. This is the third book created by David Lester, Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle. Their two previous books, Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and Under The Banner of King Death, have been published in 11 international editions (and 6 languages). 9780807012550
***
South Korean comic artist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Dog Days (Drawn & Quarterly $29.95) centres on an unconventional family trying to build trust, not only with each other, but with their neighbours. Yuna never wanted to adopt a dog. But with her partner in mourning—and in need of a boost in morale—she gives in to his request, and surprisingly she becomes inseparable from the puppy. Translated by Janet Hong, a writer based in Vancouver. 781770467316
***
A finalist for a 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. The Gulf (Tundra $20.99) by Adam de Souza follows a group of high schoolers graduating into a world they do not understand. As a cure for their frustration, they run away from home to an island commune that promises a way of living that makes sense to them. For ages 14 and up.
9781774880739
***
Keeping it real for ages 8 to 12 is Gamerville (HarperAlley $15.99) by Johnnie Christmas. A contemporary exploration of the importance of human connections when a video gamer’s championship aspirations are dashed after his parents send him to Camp Reset, where electronics are forbidden and he is forced to socialize, eat healthy and spend
time outside. 9780063056817
BOOKS:
Tangles: A story about Alzheimer's, my mother and me (Freehand 2010) $23.96
Agnes, Murderess (Freehand 2019) $29.95 978-1-988298-47-4
[BCBW 2019]
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (Freehand $23.96)
Article
Sarah Leavitt's graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me (Freehand $23.96) tells the story of her mother developing Alzheimer's and her family's emotional reactions that ranged from shock, denial, anger, frustration to hope. The family manages to find moments of happiness that reveal the poignant bonds between mother and daughter. Sarah Leavitt's non-fiction has appeared in Nobody's Mother (Heritage 2006) and Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer's Disease (Kent State University Press 2009). Tangles is the first graphic narrative to be a finalist for the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize. Tangles was also nominated for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. 978-1-55111-117-9
[BCBW 2011]
