Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton is a cartoonist and graphic novelist from Nova Scotia. While studying history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Beaton began writing comics for the student newspaper. Her comics, which combined literature, history, and off-beat humour, became immensely popular online, leading to the publication of two acclaimed comic volumes: Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops!, as well as children’s picture books The Princess and the Pony and King Baby. Beaton’s first graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, received wide acclaim. In addition to being the first graphic narrative to win Canada Reads, Ducks received the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature and the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir, as well as praise from Quill and Quire, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and President Barack Obama. It won the 2024 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. Beaton currently resides in Nova Scotia / Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People, with her husband and two children.