Hark! Another Ducks Award
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Kate Beaton fame began with her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant and has grown worldwide with her recent win of the 2024 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature for her Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands graphic novel.
“…a piercing and daring graphic memoir that sheds light on the hidden side of working conditions in the oil industry through the eyes of a young woman and recent graduate who is thrown into a toxic world because of economic hardship. Featuring clean lines and dialogue imbued with great narrative force, this visual autobiography is able to embrace the most sensitive and painful questions of our time – hypercapitalism, the environment, impoverishment, sexism and sexual harassment – without such a traumatic experience stifling her deep empathy for others in similar circumstances. A profoundly moving masterpiece thanks to the courage it embodies.”
Dean Simons at The Beat reports:
Kate Beaton’s graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands adds yet another award for the shelf as it becomes the 2024 recipient of the Jan Michalski Prize for World Literature – and the first graphic novel to do so.
Begun in 2010, the Jan Michalski Prize is an annual award for works of fiction and non-fiction from across the globe. Prose, collections, poetry or illustrated works are submitted for consideration by members of the jury without the involvement of authors or publishers. Winners are announced in November following three rounds of voting, receiving a cash prize of 50,000 Swiss Francs (~$57,000) and their choice of a work of art to keep.
While an important award it is not Kate’s first for her graphic novel:
Beaton’s graphic novel, published by Drawn & Quarterly, has received immense acclaim since its debut in 2022 – with a 2023 French-language release by Casterman pushing it into critical selection lists in both North America and Europe. Its English release won two Eisners, two Ringos, an Ignatz and a Harvey in the US, as well as the Doug Wright Award in Canada. It was also the first graphic novel to win the Canada Reads competition. A paperback edition is expected in 2025 [link added].
Eleanor Davis at The Comics Journal summarizes the story:
In Ducks we see that most of the people who work in the oil sands of landlocked northern Alberta are from somewhere else. Beaton is from the island of Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia, on the Canadian east coast. A lot of her coworkers come from there too. They are from Newfoundland (“accordions and codfish”) and Cape Breton (“fiddles and lobster”). They share similar accents and familiar names and a deep love of home. Like Kate, they wish they could return. But like Kate they need money. The old jobs are gone – coal mines and steel plants shut, the Grand Banks irreparably depleted by overfishing. They can’t find work there.
Oil sands, or tar sands, are sand and rock containing bitumen, a dense form of crude oil. Bitumen extraction is laborious, environmentally devastating, and, especially in 2005-2008 when the book is set, extremely profitable. “Is this a… nice place to work?” Kate asks a boss early on. “What kind of question is that?” he responds. “You’re here and you make money.” It is not a nice place to work. It is boring, dangerous, and isolating. But this is where the jobs are. So the have-nots of Canada go to the sands, where none of them really live.
The CBC heralds Canada’s graphic novel author:
Ducks became the first graphic memoir to win Canada Reads in 2023 when it was championed by Jeopardy! star Mattea Roach, who is now the host of CBC’s new author interview show, Bookends.
Beaton launched her career by publishing the historical webcomic strip Hark! A Vagrant which won both the Doug Wright Awards best book prize in 2012. She then published Ducks, which won the 2023 Doug Wright Award for best book and two Eisner Awards, the Harvey Award, the Ignatz Award and two Ringo Awards.
In Ducks, Beaton leaves her tight-knit seaside Nova Scotia community to pay off her student debt working in the Albertan oil sands where she encounters harsh realities, including the everyday trauma that no one discusses.
The jury called Ducks “a profoundly moving masterpiece thanks to the courage it embodies” in a press statement.
“Featuring clean lines and dialogue imbued with great narrative force, this visual autobiography is able to embrace the most sensitive and painful questions of our time — hypercapitalism, the environment, impoverishment, sexism and sexual harassment.”
“[Ducks is] a piercing and daring graphic memoir that sheds light on the hidden side of working conditions in the oil industry through the eyes of a young woman.”
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