"Torngat Sketches" is Sarah Leavitt's contribution to Northwords, a cross-platform project that takes urban Canadian writers to some of the world's most extreme environments.

Introduced by award-winning journalist and radio personality Shelagh Rogers, Northwords is a collection of stories written by acclaimed Canadian authors as they experienced one of Canada’s most awe-inspiring northern national parks Torngat Mountains National Park, the country’s newest national park, and a place steeped in geological and human history. The cross-platform project, which includes a documentary film that follows the authors as they explored the harsh and stunning terrain, had adventures, and created these new works, adds to the continuing story of the North. The stories explore the idea of the North, and what happens when the country’s best writers tackle its most overwhelmingly beautiful places.

Taking advantage of opportunities presented by transmedia integration, users can experience the stories in the writers’ own words through Anansi Digital, as well as learn more about their processes and what inspired them through interactive content. Users will have access to film and audio content, and together, these related media will create a larger story web, allowing the audience to truly immerse themselves in the sights, sounds, and stories of the North.

Sarah Leavitt has earned international acclaim as a writer and cartoonist. Her first book, Tangles: A story about Alzheimer's, my mother, and me, was published in Canada, the US, UK, Germany, France and Korea and a feature-length animation is in development. In 2010, it became the first work of graphic literature to be a finalist for the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize. It was also a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2010, the winner of the 2011 CBC Bookie Award for Best Comic or Graphic Novel, a finalist for the 2011 Alberta Readers' Choice Award and a finalist for the 2011 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize. Her prose and comics have appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in Canada, the US and the UK. Sarah teaches comics classes in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Sarah Leavitt's profile page