Congratulations to Linda Warley, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, and professor of English for winning the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Graphic, co-edited with Candida Rifkind of the University of Winnipeg. Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives presents critical essays on contemporary Canadian cartoonists working in graphic life narrative, from confession to memoir to biography.
The book includes chapters by three UWaterloo English alumni. Kevin Ziegler’s “Public Dialogues: Intimacy and Judgment in Canadian Confessional Comics” opens the collection; Kathleen Venema contributed “Untangling the Graphic Power of Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me“; and Andrew Deman is the author of “‘Oh Well’: My New York Diary, Autographics, and the Depiction of Female Sexuality in Comics.”
The essays explore the visual styles and storytelling techniques of Canadian cartoonists, as well as their shared concern with the spectacular vulnerability of the self. Canadian Graphic also considers the role of graphic life narratives in reimagining the national past, including Indigenous–settler relations, both world wars, and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.
The Gabrielle Roy Prize is awarded each year, one in English and one in French, for the best book-length studies in Canadian and Québec literary criticism. The announcement of Prof. Warley's co-prize was made this week at the annual meeting of L’Association des littératures canadiennes et québécoise /Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures.
With information from Words In Place, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and The Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures.