She began the book during the pandemic when visiting her childhood home in rural Co Tyrone. \u201cIt was the first time I was home for spring in a decade, I decided I\u2019d really like to make a St Brigid\u2019s cross<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n As she interlaced the reeds, McCann was \u201cmindlessly scrolling on Instagram\u201d where she follows several Northern Irish pro-choice accounts. \u201cI noticed a lot of these account were sharing St Brigid\u2019s iconography,\u201d says McCann. This left her \u201cquite excited by it but confused; in my head they didn\u2019t really go together\u201d.<\/p>\n McCann looked further into Ireland\u2019s female patron saint and her connection with abortion<\/a>. At the time she was doing an online course in drawing graphic narratives, having honed in on hand-drawn animation and comics in her visual communications degree. And through this course she began work on the first few pages of what has become her book. <\/p>\n Like many Irish schoolchildren, McCann had been taught much about St Brigid of Kildare. \u201cI loved her character, her magical cloak\u201d, which she now sees as a \u201cvery anti-landlord and anticolonial story\u201d. But the saint\u2019s \u201cmagical\u201d abortion miracle was one she had not learned about, guessing it wasn\u2019t \u201csomething which the Catholic Church is a fan of\u201d. <\/p>\n McCann found the idea intriguing. She learned more about how Brigid\u2019s full story was recorded in the seventh-century Irish hagiography. In it an Irish monk wrote about how a pregnant nun went to Brigid in fear and Brigid blessed her, causing the pregnancy to disappear and restoring the woman\u2019s health without childbirth or pain. It left McCann wanting to tell a story that focused on how St Brigid was such a caring figure and to show this miracle as healthcare. <\/p>\n [\u00a0St Brigid\u2019s activities: Fire displays, parades and gigs to see over bank holiday weekendOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Nonfiction graphic novels are a \u201creally important form of journalism\u201d, she says. It\u2019s a \u201chelpful way of communicating areas which are often stigmatised\u201d particularly in the health sphere. \u201cThere is something very immediate about comics,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n Much of her early exposure to comics and graphic novels was in Omagh library as a teenager. But she grew up in a house where her parents and siblings all drew. \u201cIt was encouraged. Mummy always wanted us to make cards rather than buying them.\u201d <\/p>\n After doing a foundation course in Belfast, McCann \u201cwanted to leave\u201d Ireland and \u201csee a wider range of people, to do something different and go somewhere new\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2011 she moved to the north Yorkshire city to study, attracted by the underlying ethos of the broad art course: \u201cMaking the world a better place.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe were taught to investigate things and to weigh up the effect.\u201d <\/p>\n At a job in a print co-operative after college, her colleagues encouraged her to work on the Brigid & Me project and to print the graphic novel.<\/p>\n McCann is working as a reprographics teacher in a secondary school. No doubt many of her students read graphic novels, a booming area in children\u2019s fiction. But the graphic novels written for adults category has also risen strongly in recent years, with a spend of more than \u00a350 million (\u20ac57 million) in Britain in 2022 compared with just \u00a35 million in 2005, according to Bookseller.<\/a> <\/p>\n [\u00a0Time to restore Brigit\u2019s distaff as a symbol of peace and healingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it was sniffed at in the past as not serious or not really reading, but it\u2019s a very important literary device,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n McCann, who says she entered the contest just to get industry feedback, seems taken aback by her success. But with the prize win has come a flurry of phone calls and meetings about publishing her graphic novel. \u201cI feel floored at the idea that I will soon have a graphic novel behind me. This is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n Hannah McCann<\/a> is from Co Tyrone and has lived in Leeds since 2011. <\/p>\n![\"Hannah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2PEGAY4CRVBODDMA5FACEFXXQM.jfif.jpeg\")
Hannah McCann. Photograph: Theo Rumsby <\/p>\n