Sarah Leavitt 

Sarah Leavitt is the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me, which is currently in production as a feature-length animation, and the award-winning historical fiction comic Agnes, Murderess. She is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012. Leavitt lives in Vancouver.

Website: sarahleavitt.com
Instagram: @sarah_leav
Facebook: Sarah Leavitt

FESTIVAL BOOK

Something, Not Nothing

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s partner of 22 years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo’s death, Leavitt began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil—for Leavitt, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation.

She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

GET THE BOOK

Owl’s Nest Books

BE CURIOUSER

• Through Chronic Pain, a Transcendent Exploration of Love. –The Tyee
• Joyful persistence: Some thoughts on being a creative worker. –Sarah Leavitt
• A Q&A with Sarah Leavitt. –Read Alberta