The Canadian Comic Book Association has announced the nominees for the 2020 Joe Shuster Awards, and Sarah Leavitt has been recognized as a Cartoonist for her work on the imaginative graphic novel Agnes, Murderess, which was published by Freehand Books.
Established in 2004, The Joe Shuster Awards are Canada’s national award recognizing outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books, graphic novels, webcomics and digital comics. The winners will be announced in late October, on a date to be announced.
Agnes, Murderess is a graphic novel inspired by the bloody legend of Agnes McVee, a roadhouse owner, madam and serial killer in the Cariboo region of British Columbia in the late nineteenth century. Fascinated by this legend, which originated in a 1970s guide to buried treasure in BC, and has never been verified, Sarah Leavitt has imagined an entirely new story for the mysterious Agnes: her immigration to Canada from an isolated Scottish Island; her complex entanglement with shiny things; and her terrifying grandmother, Gormul, who haunts Agnes’s dreams and waking life.
Sarah Leavitt is the author of Tangles: A Story of Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me and Agnes, Murderess. Tangles was published in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, France, and Korea, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize in 2010. It is currently in development as a feature-length animation. Leavitt teaches comics classes at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Sarah is represented by Samantha Haywood.
To see the full list of nominees, please visit: https://joeshusterawards.com/2020/09/08/nominations-for-the-2020-joe-shuster-awards/