What does it mean to be happy, to be sated, to live a meaningful life? Is wanderlust curable? Is depression? Echoing the sensation of riding a bicycle, Cyclettes is a multidisciplinary contemplation on the borderlands of adulthood.

Part travelogue, part philosophical musing, Tree Abraham's work probes the millennial experience, asking what a young life can be when unshackled from traditional role expectations yet still living in consistent economic and environmental uncertainty.

Text is interspersed between drawings, scientific charts, ephemera, maps, arcane designs, and diagrams of cycles—of vehicles and of life, from the Buddhist Eightfold path to patterns of depression, desire, and motion. The result is a disarming, welcoming work that asks us to consider what the interflux of exploration and ennui mean to our locality within the universe.

Cyclettes is an original, insightful artifact of modern life.

Tree Abraham is a queer Ottawa-born, Brooklyn-based writer, book designer, and maker of things whose design articles have been published in The Author Journal, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Spine Magazine, and All Lit Up. She has a Bachelor of Social Sciences in International Development and Environmental Sustainability and a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and Illustration. She is a cover designer for publishers across North America, serves as publisher and art director for Canthius, a feminist literary journal, and is an associate art director in-house at Grand Central Publishing. Her authorship experiments with fragmented essays and mixed media visuals. When not working, she can be found travelling to unmarked places, collecting people, and cycling to swimming spots.

Tree Abraham's profile page

• Short-listed, VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award
• Winner, Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design: Prose Non-fiction

“Equal parts whimsical and philosophical, Cyclettes extends beyond conventional narrative with illustrations, collages, photographs and other design elements.” —The New York Times