All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey
WINNER of 2 Alberta Literary Awards (the Memoir Award and the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction)

From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. Beginning with her mother’s stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the beginnings of the disconnection she feels from her parents. Through a series of stories – some epic, like her mother and father’s daring escapes from communes during China’s Cultural Revolution, and some banal, like her quitting Chinese school to watch Saturday morning cartoons – Wong carefully examines the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy in her family, seeking answers to the questions “Where did I come from?” and “Where are we going?” At the same time, she discovers how storytelling can bridge distances and help make sense of a life.

A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves, All Our Ordinary Stories is poignant in its understated yet nuanced depictions of complicated family dynamics. Wong’s memoir is a heartfelt exploration of identity and inheritance, as well as a testament to the transformative power of stories both told and untold.

Something, Not Nothing:A Story of Grief and Love
Finalist, Will Eisner Award; Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes

A poignant and beautifully illustrated graphic memoir about love and loss and navigating a new life. In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo’s death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil – for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

SARAH LEAVITT (she/her) is a cartoonist, writer and professor. Her most recent book, Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024), was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir. She is also the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (Freehand Books, 2010). A feature-length animation based on Tangles is in production, with release planned for 2026.  She is also the author of the award-winning historical fiction comic Agnes, Murderess (Freehand Books, 2019). Sarah Leavitt is an associate professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate comics classes since 2012.

TERESA WONG (she/her) is a writer and cartoonist based in Calgary, Alberta. Her comics and illustrated essays have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Walrus. Her latest book, All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) received two 2025 Alberta Literary Awards: the Memoir Award and the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction. Her first graphic memoir, Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression (2019), was a finalist for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Both All Our Ordinary Stories and Dear Scarlet were longlisted for CBC Canada Reads.

To reserve tickets for this event, please email our Ticket Coordinator, Cait Yaga at events@litfestalberta.org.