Emanata, a new YA graphic novel imprint of Conundrum Press, launches

Emanata, a new YA graphic novel imprint of Conundrum Press, launches Call Me Bill The imprint’s first release explores history, queer identity and the courage to be oneself

by Mallory Burnside-Holmes

Ayoung-adult graphic-novel imprint has set sail in Nova Scotia. Award-winning children’s author and graphic novel connoisseur, Sal Sawler, is at the helm, leading its debut title, Call Me Bill, by Lynette Richards, into open seas.

Emanata, an imprint of Conundrum Press, promises to bring high-quality, character-driven graphic novels to young adults and to anyone who loves the agelessness of a coming-of-age story. It opens a space for Canadian creators to showcase their literary and visual artistic prowess to tell untraditional stories and previously untold histories.

“I want people to know that if they purchase an Emanata book they’re getting [...] a story they haven’t run into a whole bunch of times before,” Sawler says, “But more than anything, I want teens to know if they pick up an Emanata book they are going to see their own world reflected.”

When Lynette Richards’ Call Me Bill slid itself into Sawler’s submission pile, it was like they heard “an audible click.”

“Her work is just stunning. Her illustrations [...] just blew me away. I opened them and it was masterpiece after masterpiece,” Sawler recounts. It was without a doubt the title that would lead Emanata on its maiden voyage.

In Call Me Bill, author and artist Lynnete Richards rediscovers the largely forgotten history of a “female sailor” whose body was found in the wreckage of the SS Atlantic steamship that crashed

on the shores of Lower Prospect, NS, at 3:00 am on April 1, 1873. In watercolour illustrations that spill across the page and defy straight lines, Richards paints what is known and what she imagines of the sailor, who was named Maggie at birth but went by Bill whenever wearing their “pantaloons.”

How Bill’s story found Richards is a tale within itself. When Richards first moved to Nova Scotia from Ontario, she found herself living on a rural road with her spouse, Nadia, in Terence Bay. Looking for a way to connect with her new community she wandered down to a small museum at the end of her street, where she discovered the story of the SS Atlantic. It wasn’t long before she joined the board of the SS Atlantic Heritage Park Society. For six years she dedicated herself to honouring the story of the victims, survivors and rescuers of the historic crash.

She was enraptured by the story of the then state-of-the-art White Starline steamer carrying 1,000 people (mostly immigrants and many women and children) that was forced off course by a storm while sailing from Liverpool to New York.

“And then, to put a cherry on top, was the discovery that one of the sailors who died was—according to the language of the time—a female sailor.”

In Bill’s story, Richards found a reflection of herself. “It resonated with my own story of being a gender non-conforming woman when I came out of art school in 1979. There were a lot of obstacles in my way to [finding work]. There were still gauntlets that women were sort of ushered into. Secretary, teacher—they weren’t trades. And I wanted to go into the trades.”

Richards is a lifelong cartoonist who studied printmaking in school and has since become a Master Artisan in the art of stained glass.

Call Me Bill

Lynette Richards Emanata

Richard’s expertise in stained glass aligns perfectly with her first foray into graphic novels. Both are visual art forms that tell a story in sequential order.

“I chose stained glass as my medium because it is a storytelling medium […] I’m not a religious person at all, but I am a scholar of church stories, and I can see how metaphorically they are like fairy tales and other types of guiding stories, and that fascinates me. But they didn’t tell women’s stories, they only told men’s stories. It was patriarchal to the max. So I got into this material with the intention of telling women’s stories as sacred stories in a medium that is about sacred stories.”

From the outset, Richards knew this story would be told as a graphic novel, “I could see it in my head like a movie,” she says. Her stunning watercolour and ink illustrations traverse pages in shades of grey.

“I wanted to comment visually on the whole notion of non-binary. There is black and white, but all these greys in between them. [The illustrations] cross lines; they have a fluidity that suited the story.”

One might not initially consider a shipwreck in which hundreds of women and children died the obvious subject for a young adult’s story. (The first few pages paint quite a bleak scene.) Richards sees things differently.

“I don’t believe in talking down to children. I don’t do baby talk, never did. I think children have a capacity to understand— and in fact, they must be allowed to grow and expand into the life that they want to lead and are born to lead.”

Call Me Bill is many stories in one. “There are two lost stories in this book,” Richards says, “that of the sailor and that of the SS Atlantic. [The wreck] got overshadowed by the World War, the Titanic [and] economic disasters. This was wrong and the story needed to be re-told.”

Bill’s story also tells that of millions of people, one that will resonate with anyone who has carved out a path for themselves in defiance of cultural norms in order to live an authentic life that’s true to themselves.

Call Me Bill hit bookstores September 13, an intentional time as the wreck approaches its 150th anniversary this coming April. While the wreck—the largest in Nova Scotia’s history and second ever in Canada—is significant, Richards wants to shift the focus to the rescue.

“Women played a huge role in that. The local people made a champion effort to go into the ocean [...] and it was dangerous and cold.

“They rescued 400 people and gave them food and shelter and bandaged them. There are stories that there were so many wet, traumatized people going through the houses that they had to drill holes into the floors to drain the houses. And there are still a couple houses that are proof of that.”

Stay tuned for more from Emanata, which will publish one title a year and is currently lined up to 2024. ■ MALLORY BURNSIDE-HOLMES is a freelance writer and editor living in Halifax.