Penn State Press, which is already home to a robust list of Graphic Medicine books, has created a new graphic novel imprint, Graphic Mundi, which will feature graphic novels, both fiction and nonfiction on a host of topics, including health, human rights, politics, science, the environment, and technology, designed for adult and young adult audiences. The imprint will debut in Spring 2021 with the following lineup:
- COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology, a collection edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson of more than forty short works about the pandemic from mainstream and indie creators, including Ignatz Award and Eisner Award winners.
- Three graphic narratives of personal trauma: a sudden diagnosis of quadriplegia in Twister, by Roland Burkart; an overwhelming eating disorder in Fat, by Regina Hofer; and a child’s account of living with a mother with bipolar disorder in The Parakeet, by Espé.
- Crude: A Memoir, by Pablo Fajardo, Sophie Tardy-Joubert, and Damian Roudeau, recounts the fight for social and environmental justice in the Amazonian oil fields.
- Dirty Biology: The X-Rated Story of the Science of Sex, by Léo and Colas Grasset, and The Body Factory: From the First Prosthetics to the Augmented Human, by Héloïse Chochois, humorously explore the biology of sex and the history of human amputation and augmentation.
Kendra Boileau, the assistant Director and editor-in-chief of Penn State University Press, will be the publisher of the new imprint; she was already spearheading the Graphic Medicine books. Here’s what she had to say about her vision for the imprint:
Graphic Mundi will represent a broad range of voices and experiences, including those of marginalized individuals and groups, or those whose works have not been previously accessible to anglophone readers. These graphic novels will address serious topics, but they’ll do so in engag- ing, provocative, and sometimes humorous ways. They’ll have the potential to trans- form how we see ourselves, others, and the world. The imprint is thus an excellent fit for our mission as a university press.
Check out the covers of the first season’s titles below!