We are elated to share that Transatlantic client Drawn & Quarterly’s bestselling title DUCKS: TWO YEARS IN THE OIL SANDS by Kate Beaton has WON CANADA READS!
Canada Reads is a “Literary Survivor,” with celebrities championing books. Each day, panellists vote to eliminate one book, until a single title is chosen as the title the whole country should read this year.
Five books, five champions, one winner: CBC’s annual Battle of the Books has been getting people listening, watching and, of course, reading, for the past 18 years.
And this year DUCKS has been chosen as the champion!!
About the book:
Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.
Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.
Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
About Drawn & Quarterly:
Over the past thirty years, Drawn & Quarterly has grown from a single-issue magazine to an internationally renowned publisher of the world’s best cartoonists. D+Q has published many North American luminaries of the medium including Adrian Tomine, Lynda Barry, Nick Drnaso, Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Aminder Dhaliwal, Ebony Flowers, and Seth, as well as international authors including Tove Jansson (Finland); Guy Delisle (France); Tom Gauld (UK); Astrid Lindgren (Sweden); Yoshiharu Tsuge (Japan); Rutu Modan (Israel); Shigeru Mizuki (Japan); Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (Korea); Zuo Ma (China); and many more cartoonists from across the globe. The company’s dedication to high production values, editorial integrity, and artistic autonomy has led to it being described by Time as “the most elegant comics publisher in North America.” D+Q books have been nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, Giller Prize, NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, the Story Prize, and many Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Awards.
The company operates two storefronts, La Librairie D+Q and La Petite Librairie D+Q, in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, the very same neighbourhood where the company was founded in 1989 by Chris Oliveros.
To learn more about this terrific title and Canada Reads, follow this link: https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads
Drawn & Quarterly is represented by Evan Brown and Samantha Haywood.
Congratulations!