It's an exciting time to be reading graphic novels! The finalists for the Cartoonist Studio Prize and the Lambda Literary Awards were just announced, and it's great to see store faves like Tommi Parrish, Tara Booth, Kieler Roberts, Tillie Walden, Yvan Algabé, Eleanor Davis, and Liana Finck being recognized. You can check out their books, and more shortlisted authors, in our new comics display!

Here's some highlights of what we've been reading:

Fashion Forecasts is Yumi Sakugawa's latest: an imaginative exploration of fashion and objectification. You might recognize Sakugawa from hit books I Think I Am In Friend Love With You and Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With the Universe

Piero is an emotional and imaginative memoir. The precocious story and effervescent drawings held my attention. I started to read this book standing up and ended it nearly dancing, unable to contain my excitement.

Witchbody, by Sabrina Scott, is a bold graphic work of theory and reflection, considering the relationships between magic, body knowledge, and environments that infuse and inform our everyday lives. While the work is theoretically rich (it's rare to see comics with bibliographies, let alone ones that cite the likes of Sara Ahmed, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour), the text isn't dense but deep and distilled.

John, Dear is a dark and exquisitely subtle horror story. Lannes invites close attention with dark and hazy drawings that come off the page only long enough for you to witness them sinking back into it. The book creeps and seeps like the abuse it recounts, and the result is positively chilling.

In The Sounds and Seas is a wordless odyssey full of waves, whalebones, birds and braids. Galloway's black and white drawings are breathtaking and full of details as endless as the journey they depict.

Summer Pierre's All the Sad Songs is another of our recent Retrofit arrivals. Fans of Blame This on the Boogie (Rina Ayunyang) and The Good Times Are Killing Me (Lynda Barry) will especially appreciate this contribution to the fast-growing trend of musical graphic memoirs. Each of the books chapters end with several playlists so you can listen along, and perhaps even find your new favourite cartoonist and musician in the very same book.

Two highlights from the recently announced awards finalists are The Lie and How We Told It by Tommi Parrish and We're Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. 

I've gushed about how much I love The Lie and How We Told It before (both on the blog and at our Graphic Novel Book Club). If you keep an eye out, you might even recognize some familiar Montreal sights.

In a similar vein, We're Still Here features local artists Sophie Labelle and Evelyn Ricky amongst the stellar lineup in this groundbreaking anthology.