Exploring Narrative Expression

Prof. Catherine Heard recently instructed each of the 17 students in her class to create a graphic novelette. “The graphic novella is a way of exploring narrative expression,” says Heard, who teaches in the Vic One program’s Norman Jewison Stream for Imagination and the Arts. “It isn’t associated with high art – you can insert it very easily into the public sphere.”

The novelettes were published in The Book of Norman. The title is a nod to the program’s namesake and a play on The Book of Mormon. Jessica Wong wrote about Omar Khadr’s imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay (above), while other students tackled propaganda and starvation in North Korea, and a struggle with identity as a second-generation Japanese-Canadian. The book is available at the Hart House Library.