Leanne Shapton

Who is Leanne Shapton?

Leanne Shapton is a Canadian artist and graphic novelist, now living in New York City. Her second work, Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, has been optioned for a film slated to star Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman. The novel, which takes the form of an auction catalog, uses photographs and accompanying captions to chronicle the romance and subsequent breakup of a couple via the relationship's significant possessions or "artifacts".

Shapton's first work, Was She Pretty?, was a nominee for the Doug Wright Award, a Canadian award for comics and graphic novels, in 2007. It explored, via a series of line-drawn illustrations, the issues of relationship jealousy and feminine insecurity as told through the imagined superior traits of the subjects' boyfriends' exes.

Shapton is also an art director for newspapers and magazines. Formerly associated with Saturday Night, Maclean's and the National Post in Canada, she has worked as art director for the op-ed page at The New York Times. She has created hand lettering for a number of book covers, including Chuck Palahniuk's 2003 novel Diary. She is also a partner in J&L Books.