This month at COVEN we are over the moon to host the Toronto launch of Diane Obomsawins graphic novel On Loving Women Jaime les Filles. Co-hosted with The Beguiling and Drawn & Quarterly.

 

On Loving Women is a new collection of stories about coming out, first love, and sexual identity by the animator Diane Obomsawin. With this work, Obomsawin brings her gaze to bear on subjects closer to homeher friends and lovers personal accounts of realizing theyre gay or first finding love with another woman. Each story is a master class in reaching the emotional truth of a situation with the simplest means possible. Her stripped-down pages use the bare minimum of linework to expressively reveal heartbreak, joy, irritation, and fear.

 

On Loving Women focuses primarily on adolescencecrushes on high school teachers, awkwardness on first datesbut also addresses much deeper-seated difficulties of being out: fears of rejection and of not being who others want one to be. Within these pages, Obomsawin has forged a poignant, powerful narrative that speaks to the difficulties of coming out and the joys of being loved. DRAWN & QUARTERLY

Diane will be reading from On Loving Women and Alex will interview her, hopefully not bursting into a fit of homesick sentimental Montreal tears. Damian will read incantations and poetry and channel our dead through pipe cleaners. Canon Cook will spin from her precious record collection, rescued from a Hamilton storage unit. The poet Hoa Nguyen will be on the tarot decks this month.