A graphic novel adaptation of #1 New York Times bestselling author N. K. Jemisin’s acclaimed short story Red Dirt Witch

In this graphic novel adaptation of the #1 New York Times bestselling author N. K. Jemisin’s short story “Red Dirt Witch”—which was featured in the 2018 short story collection How Long ’Til Black Future Month?—we are introduced to Emma, a single Black mother of three in a backwater Alabama town in segregated 1940s America. In this alternative universe, magic and faeries exist, and Emma must use her Afrocentric cultural “magicks” against a supernatural force that wants to enslave her daughter, Pauline. Jemisin infuses this world with the magic, complexity, and power of oral Black folklore that have become trademarks of her work in trilogies like The Broken Earth and Inheritance.

Red Dirt Witch has been expertly adapted into the graphic novel format by writer Kinitra Brooks and illustrators Ashley A. Woods and Shomari Harrington. They have translated Jemisin’s powerful prose into a stunning visual story of family and sacrifice. It’s a heartbreaking reminder of the many injustices that Black mothers still have to endure in our country to ensure a better future for their children, but this story will resonate with readers everywhere.

N. K. Jemisin is a science-fiction and fantasy writer and a psychologist based in New York. Her fiction explores a wide variety of themes, including cultural conflict and oppression. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award and four Hugo Awards, three of which were for each of the books in her Broken Earth series—making her the only author to have won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years and the first author to have won for all three books in a trilogy. In 2020, Jemisin was the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, and in 2021, she was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 most influential people.” Her novels have sold more than one million copies worldwide. Kinitra D. Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the department of English at Michigan State. She specializes in the study of Black women, genre fiction, and popular culture. She currently has three books in print: Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror, Sycorax’s Daughters, and The Lemonade Reader. She is also the coeditor of the New Suns book series. She lives in East Lansing, Michigan. Ashley A. Woods is an artist from Chicago. She got her start through self-publishing her action-fantasy comic series Millennia War, which led her to a career in comics and TV, including Niobe, Tomb Raider, and Wonder Woman , HBO’s Lovecraft Country, and Jupiter Invincible with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Yusef Komunyakaa, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2021. Her work has received international recognition, including in Kyoto, Japan, where she presented in a gallery showcase titled Out of Sequence. Shomari Harrington graduated with a bachelor’s degree in film majoring in animation from Columbia College Chicago. His artwork has also appeared at the exhibition Milestones: African Americans in Comics, Pop Culture and Beyond, hosted at the Geppi Museum of Entertainment in Baltimore, Maryland.