Dark Horse to Publish The Secret Loves of Geek Girls Anthology

By: Nicole D’Andria

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls is an anthology series featuring a mixture of prose and comics. These stories feature love, dating and sex. Over 50 creators came together to write and/or illustrate for this anthology, including Booker Award–winning novelist Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), Trina Robbins (Wonder Woman), Marguerite Bennett (A-Force) and Marjorie Liu (Astonishing X-Men, Monstress).

The anthology was compiled and edited by Hope Nicholson, a Winnipeg-based comic book publisher and the owner of Bedside Press. She is also the consulting editor on the upcoming Margaret Atwood graphic novel Angel Catbird. Nicholson commented, “These are the stories we bond over when we get together at a comic con, play video games, and marathon Star Trek…. They are stories about the loves of our lives (both real and fictional!), and our embarrassing moments as we grow and learn more about the complex worlds of love and dating, especially as they relate to our fandom obsessions. All of the writers and artists involved—especially me—are incredibly excited to work with Dark Horse and bring our stories into comic and book stores worldwide.”

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls anthology also features cartoons by Margaret Atwood about her personal experiences as a young woman, a comic by Fionna Adams and Jen Vaughn about being a trans woman discovering her romantic and sexual inclinations while being a comic book nerd and a story written by Marguerite Bennett about how fandom lets us say how we feel to our loved ones. These are just a few of the many stories collected in the anthology.

"Paper Dolls" by Margaret Atwood

Other comics feature writers such as Meaghan Carter, Megan Kearney, ALB, Meags Fitzgerald, Gillian G., Diana Nock, Roberta Gregory, Laura Neubert, Sarah Winifred Searle, Natalie Smith, Jenn Woodall, and Irene Koh. There are also illustrated stories by Janet Hetherington, Sam Maggs and Selena Goulding, Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melançon, Cherelle Ann Sarah Higgins and Rachael Wells, Annie Mok, and Stephanie Cooke and Deena Pagliarello. Prose stories include writers Brandy Dawley, Diana McCallum, Jen Aprahamian, Katie West, Adrienne Kress, Soha Kareem, Loretta Jean, J. M. Frey, Trina Robbins, Twiggy Tallant, Hope Nicholson, Crystal Skillman, Emma Woolley, Gita Jackson, Natalie Zina Walschots, Alicia Contestabile, Tini Howard, Cara Ellison, Jessica Oliver Proulx, and Erin Cossar.

The project was originally on Kickstarter and with the help of 3,640 backers, it reached $122,286 Canadian American dollars. You can actually buy the PDF and paperback of the Kickstarter version on editor Hope Nicholson’s page. This version was published by Bedside Press in December 2015. It's also available on Amazon. 

Version available on Hope Nicholson's page

The Secret Loves of Geek Girls will being published again by Dark Horse in October 2016 in both comic book stores and bookstores. This will allow the anthology to get an even bigger release than it achieved on Kickstarter and further spread the word about it. The Dark Horse Comics version of The Secret Loves of Geek Girls will include a foreword written by Kelly Sue DeConnick (Ms. Marvel, Bitch Planet) and a new cover will be created by Noelle Stevenson (Nimona). I’m psyched to see so many geek girls coming together to create a huge anthology such as this. As a fellow geek girl, I’m really looking forward to experiencing it.