At age 21, Alison hitchhiked to the Yukon and spent the summer living in a tent. 10 years later, in the deep of winter and seven months pregnant, she returns. Degrees of Separation is about what happened in between.
Over the course of a decade, artist Alison McCreesh lived, worked, and travelled north of the 60th parallel. Through a combination of autobiographical stories, drawings and sketches, Degrees of Separation offers an intimate and understated glimpse of the North as Alison experienced it. From frigid days spent killing time while stranded in the High Arctic, to the challenges of raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, it is one young woman's personal experience of both passing through and of setting down roots.
Tinged with McCreesh's characteristic blend of humour and humanity, Degrees of Separation is about the north and its vastness and its diversity. While the backdrop may seem foreign to many, this collection is also a universal exploration of those transformative years from young-adulthood to motherhood. It's a graphic novel navigating themes of connection and disconnect, between the north and the south, but also between different norths and between our different selves.

Since moving to the Northwest Territories in 2009, Alison McCreesh has travelled extensively throughout Northern Canada and the Arctic. Through her gallery work, illustrations, sketchbooks and comics, Alison documents and explores the contemporary North. Her work dwells on the way northern identity shifts rapidly as tradition and modernity collide and coexist North of 60: sometimes in confrontation with one another, sometimes evolving in parallel and sometimes mixing to create striking hybrids. Alison currently lives in Yellowknife in a small shack on the shore of Great Slave Lake - with high speed internet and no running water.

Alison McCreesh's profile page

"Fans of Linda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, Craig Thompson's Blankets, Kate Beaton's Ducks and Jeff Lemire's Essex County series are going to feel right at home with Alison McCreesh's Degrees of Separation: A Decade North of 60. What a treasure. Mahsi cho, Alison, for sharing all of this exquisiteness with us. You're always up to magic!" - Richard Van Camp, A Blanket of Butterflies
"The tension between free-spirited off-grid living and prosaic adult responsibility runs through Alison McCreesh's tender and loving ode to the people and landscapes of the Far North." - Joe Sacco, Paying the Land
"Here's a graphic novel that's an education and an entertainment. Drawings and text zero in on the personal and quirky, then open wide for long, compelling views of a fraught yet alluring northern world. Degrees of Separation is fascinating and endearing, pointed and one of a kind, and it all rings beautifully true." - Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air, Snow Road Station
"A poignant ode to the vastness, and interconnectedness, of the North and the people who make their homes there." - Publishers Weekly