What I Knew Of My Aunt

I was engaged by Wirksworth Heritage Centre as a writer/graphic novelist in residence to produce a comic inspired by George Eliot’s Adam Bede and the novel’s links to Wirksworth. I also ran workshops with young people, providing opportunities for them to create their own creative responses to their feelings about their town and community.

This residency is running alongside a new exhibition exploring George Eliot and her literary heritage connections to Wirksworth as part of the bicentennial celebrations of the author’s birth. George Eliot’s aunt, Elizabeth Evans, lived in Wirksworth and is thought to be the inspiration for the character Dinah Morris in Adam Bede.

My comic, ‘What I Knew Of My Aunt’ considers the relationship between the two women and their environment, and is based around a letter George Eliot wrote to a friend describing her interactions with her aunt when she was a teenager. The comic will be available as an ebook and as a limited print run.