April 6, 2024
I awoke this morning to this image.
It arrived in a text message from Catherine Anyango Grünewald, who has been juggling parenting, partnering, teaching, travelling, and other major life events with illustrating the 300 pages of Graphic Dead Man Walking. Today, she finished the final page.
I am so happy for her. I experienced the euphoria of completing the script at the very end of 2023, and now Catherine can take a breather and then get back to a more balanced life after four-and-a-half years immersed in GDMW.
The joy of collaboration
It’s been a wonderful artistic partnership. I have developed a new skill in my first venture into scriptwriting a graphic book and I have learned so much from Catherine. Over the years we have developed a firm friendship, with me writing in New Orleans and she drawing in Stockholm. Her daughter, Sigrid, was a baby when we first started working together. Today, Sigrid is a dancing, flourishing young creator herself.
The last time I collaborated with an artist was decades ago when I was a journalist on a computer magazine in Australia. GDMW is an entirely different beast, both in content and in size.