Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Agent, autistic, graphic novel, rebecca burgess, speak up
Speak Up!, a New Autistic-Themed Graphic Novel by Rebecca Burgess
Speak Up! by author-illustrator Rebecca Burgess is a new contemporary middle-grade graphic novel, bought by Karen Chaplin at HarperCollins/Quill Tree, for publication in the autumn of 2022. It tells the story of an autistic girl who finds friendship where she least expects it and learns how to express her true self in a world where everyone is determined to define her by her differences.
Rebecca Burgess recently saw her graphic novel How To Be Ace published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, and the picture book she drew, Wiggles, Stomps and Squeezes, published this past week. She also creates webcomics such as the period autistic-themed comic The Song Collector on Tapas, and Understand The Spectrum. She is a freelance illustrator currently living in Bristol, and has worked for the likes of The Guardian, Creative Connection, The Beano, and Crowood Press.
Britt Siess at Britt Siess Creative Management represented Rebecca Burgess in a two-book deal for world rights. Founded in 2020, Britt Siess Creative Management is a Seattle-based full-service literary agency with an emphasis on graphic novels and illustration. They have been turning up on Bleeding Cool an awful lot since.
Quill Tree was also launched in January 2020 , with picture books by Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman, a graphic novel by Jerry Craft, a middle-grade novel by Saadia Faruqi, and YA novels by Z Brewer, Jessie Ann Foley, Anica Mrose Rissi, Neal Shusterman, and Nina Varela. Since then, they also signed up Kathleen Gros' Anne and Carousel Summer graphic novels. HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the world's largest publishing companies and is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with UK publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989.