Austen-Tatious

Kate Evans is a British writer, cartoonist, multimedia artist and public speaker with 30 years’ experience. Her previous work includes the internationally acclaimed historical biography Red Rosa and the award-winning graphic reportage Threads from the Refugee Crisis. Patchwork is her eighth work of graphic non-fiction based on the quilt that Jane Austen created in the later years of her life. Kate Evans takes the fabrics of this patchwork coverlet and uses them to illustrate a beautiful, brilliantly immersive and compelling comic-book retelling of Jane Austen’s life. She patchworks together the narrative from Austen’s own words, seamlessly interweaving snippets from her letters and stories and tells her life story from the cradle to the grave, including riotously joyous comic excerpts of her novels.

Debnita Chakravarti is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Shri Shikshayatan College. She is associated with Calcutta University, Jadavpur University, Visva Bharati and St Xavier’s College and University among other institutions as guest faculty, examiner and resource person. Her doctoral research on British Romantic women writers at University of Reading was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Southampton as a Charles Wallace scholar. She is among the lucky few to have spent a scholar residence at Chawton, researching at the Great House archives and the Jane Austen Museum. Besides Romanticism, she has presented and published internationally and at several national forums on gender and popular culture. She is a member of the Kolkata chapter of the Indo-British Scholars’ Association. She also writes poetry, fiction, screenplays and reviews. She is a freelance editor and translator working in Bengali, French and Hindi. A keen wildlife enthusiast, she was the recipient of The Independent’s Travel Writer Award, and earlier, the President’s Award for Children’s Poetry.