Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Agent, buffy, graphic novel, marketplace, Nilah Magruder, ogn, Reel Love
Nilah Magruder Sells Middle-Grade Graphic Novel Reel Love at Auction
Carytoonist Nilah Magruder based in Western Maryland. has auctioned her upcoming graphic novel Reel Love, acquired by Polo Orozco at Random House, competing with bids from six other publishers. Reel Love is based on the author's own experiences embracing being asexual and this middle grade graphic novel follows 12-year-old Nilah, who goes on a summer trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains where she develops a passion for fishing, meets a boy, and learns there's no getting away from growing up and from facing her questions about identity and love.
Nilah Magruder is best known as the author of middle-grade graphic novel M.F.K. and the first winner of the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity. She was also the first Black woman to have a comic book published by Marvel with A Year Of Marvels in September 2016, and wrote the Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic book for Boom Studios.. She has also published short stories in Fireside Magazine and the anthology All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages as well as illustrating children's books for Disney-Hyperion, Scholastic, and Penguin, and worked as a writer and storyboard artist in television animation. She is also drawing Creaky Acres, a middle-grade graphic novel about horseback riding.
Nilah Magruder tweeted that her agent Patrice Cobweb at New Leaf Literary & Media asked her "in 2018 if I had any graphic memoir pitches (I said no); a T-shirt with a big fish on it that sparked this memory; and my mom, who once whisked her lonely kid away for a magical forest adventure. This story is a departure for me, since I don't normally wear my heart on my sleeve like this. But I'm excited to be working with Polo Orozco and Random House Kids to bring you a whopper of a tale from my childhood."
Reel Love will be published in the autumn of 2023, and is the foirst of a two book deal with Random House.