DANILA BOTHA

This has such a beautiful week of firsts, and I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much to True North Country Comics Podcast for having me on their amazing comics podcast to talk about Vidal 🧡🧡🪬🎨📚It the first graphic novel podcast I've ever been part of, and I had such a great time. I love their interviews so much. It was a wonderful conversation, and you can listen to it in full here, thanks again so much for having me https://truenorthcountrycomics.com/2026/09/02/dani

I was so honoured when the Jewish Book Council asked me to write about my own family’s Sephardic history (and how it relates to Vidal) Vidal is a work of fiction, but parts of the story are based on my family’s history and I’m so honoured to get to share part of it here 🧡🧡🪬🎨📚 https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/painting-my-familys-moroccan-sephardic-jewish-story

It was such a lovely surprise to hear that A Place For People Like Us is a finalist in the 2026 CIPA EVVY award (Collective of Independent Publishers and Authors - CIPA in the US) in the Literary and Contemporary Fiction category, alongside books I've loved like Meg Richman ‘s Freya the Deer. Thanks as always to my awesome publisher Guernica Editions for all of the support 💗💗📚🎉 you can see the whole finalist's list here: https://www.cipabooks.com/cipa-evvy-2026-finalists

I’m so incredibly excited for the official Toronto launch of Vidal on September 9th🧡🧡 I wanted to write and illustrate this story for so long, and it's such a joy to be able to share it, with you and with the world soon. The launch will be hosted and presented by Koffler Arts, and I will be in conversation with the incredible Gary Barwin (https://garybarwin.com/) whose writing and music and art is so inspiring. We will also have some of the original art from Vidal, some Sep

Thank you so much to Kerry Clare at 49th Shelf for including this excerpt of Vidal on the 49th Shelf’s website. It’s so exciting to see it there 💗https://49thshelf.com/.../07/20/Illustrator-Gallery-Vidal Also, so grateful for these two lovely reviews of Vidal, the first in The Seaboard Review of Books, thank you so much to Natalie Fingerhut, who called it “so searingly beautiful… the art is astonishing… the colour is everywhere, fearless like what we imagine the author to b

Wow, I was so thrilled to see Vidal in such amazing company, thank you so much CBC Books 🧡🧡🎨📚🧡 Delighted to see Vidal on CBC’s list of 9 Canadian Illustrated Books to Read This Summer. https://www.cbc.ca/books/9-illustrated-books-to-read-this-summer-9.7260055 I love that this list includes some of my favourites, including Opioids and Organs by Arizona O'Neill , The Lost Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas , Fela by Jibola , fellow At Bay Press author George Tole

I was so excited to see A Place For People Like Us included in TNQ’s Pride Month Reading List 🏳️‍🌈🌈(alongside some of my favourite books of this year, including books by Kate Cayley, Jaclyn Desforges - Writer In Residence , Whitney French, Hope Thompson, Anuja Varghese Aga Maksimosvka, Jaime Burnet, Lee Lai, David Ly and so many more. 💜💜💜 thank you so much to The New Quarterly: Canadian Writers & Writing and Selena Mercuri for including me) 💗 https://tnq.ca/tnq-pride-m

Lately I’ve been feeling so grateful .I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be part The University of Winnipeg Canlit Writing, Publishing and Pedagogy Conference organized by the wonderful Lindsay Wong and her colleagues last month. It was my first time in Winnipeg, and I loved it. I also had the chance to be part of two incredible panels, Moving Beyond Genres: how to transition and submit while moving beyond one’s initial or primary genre, with the amazing Leesa Dean Martha

It was such a joy to get to read from Vidal last week, for the first at Ben McNally Books with such incredible writers 🧡🧡🧡📚🎉 so grateful to get to read with MC Joudrey (also my publisher at At Bay Press) Michael Mirolla (also my publisher at Guernica Editions) Nadia Staikos, Pratap Reddy, Tim Welsh whose books I love 🧡🧡📚 Ben McNally is one of my favourite book stores, and it was such a joy to see Vidal on shelves, and to get to sign books. Thank you as always to Heat

I'm so emotional and grateful to see Vidal out in the world, a real book. It was wonderful to meet my publisher, Matt Joudrey of At Bay Press in real life, at the Canlit Conference in Winnipeg, to hold a copy of the book in my hands, and to see it in the hands of friends who've preordered. I was also incredibly touched by this first review. 🥹💗🧡I love reading Comics Grinder and I’m so grateful for Henry Chamberlain’s generous review of Vidal. ”Vidal is such a beautifully r