Penn State University Press will kick off its new graphic novel imprint Graphic Mundi with COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology, a volume that collects more than 60 short comics by various creators, both emerging and well known. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this anthology will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) to support the employees of comic shops and independent bookstores who are weathering the pandemic (see “Binc Distributing over $950,000 to Comic Stores”). The book will be edited by Graphic Mundi publisher Kendra Boileau and former Lion Forge vice president of sales, marketing, and business development Rich Johnson.

COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology will be published in February 2021. In December, Artists, Writers, and Artisans (AWA) will publish a different book with the same main title, COVID Chronicles: True Stories from the Front Lines of COVID-19 (see “AWA’s Real-Time Comics Journalism of the COVID Pandemic”).

The Graphic Mundi imprint, which grew out of PSU Press’s Graphic Medicine line, will include fiction and nonfiction narratives on a variety of subjects, including health, the environment, human rights, politics, science, and technology, with the overall theme of “drawing our worlds together.” In addition to COVID Chronicles, their spring lineup includes

• Twister, by Roland Burkart, about someone who suddenly becomes quadriplegic;
• Fat, by Regina Hofer, a memoir about living with an eating disorder;
• The Parakeet, by Espé, a fictionalized account (based on the author’s experiences) of a child whose mother has bipolar disorder;
• Crude: A Memoir, by Pablo Fajardo, Sophie Tardy-Joubert, and Damien Roudeau, which mixes commerce and social justice in a tale of the Amazonian oil fields;
• Dirty Biology: The X-Rated Story of the Science of Sex, by Léo and Colas Grasset, a light-hearted look at the biology of sex; and
• The Body Factory, by HéloïseChochois, a humorous history of amputation and prosthetics.