My story

Danièle Archambault

Danièle Archambault, Ph.D., is a researcher, author, and educator who is interested in comics and graphic novels as a way to document a society’s cultural and linguistic landscape. She grew up in Montreal, Quebec where she was a tenured professor in the linguistics department at the University of Montreal until 1998. She moved to Palo Alto, California where she worked as a consultant in speech technology. In 2009, her interest in comics and bandes dessinées led her to take a class on writing graphic novels at Stanford University. She discovered a new and engaging way to share her reflections on language, culture and life. Since 2010, she published several comic books and graphic novels. Ms Archambault has had solo and group exhibitions (juried) in Canada and in the United States. She is a regular guest speaker on documenting culture and dialects through comics at various educational and cultural institutions. She teaches graphic novel and illustration classes at the Palo Alto Art Center and other educational venues, focusing on the art of visual storytelling. Since 2014, she has been an artist-in-residence in the Cubberley Studio Artist Program, a program of the City of Palo Alto.

In the past few years, she has published several full-color comic books and two electronic books.Her series Stairway Stories is a collection of three bilingual (French and English) flip-over books: In the Montreal of my childhood (2010), On the way to school (2010), The Age of Reason (2011).The stories, as well as the drawings, document with emotion and humor the culture and the French dialect spoken in Québec. In Québec-California (2012),available as a paper book and as a multi-touch e-Book, she narrates her adventures and misadventures with California wildlife. Une année sans alcool. Le journal de Catherine (Vol.1) (2014) is a 124-page full-color graphic novel, in which, through the humorous personal account of a woman’s adventures in the world of sobriety, the author takes a hard look at society’s role in the pervasive problem of alcoholism in women. The novel is also available as a webcomic and is currently being adapted to English.

List of comic books and graphic novels with ISBN numbers

Rire Sous Masque: Capsules Humoristiques de la Vie Durant la Pandémie (2022), 48 p. Album couleur .978-0-9896932-9-5

Smiling Through the Mask: A Collection of Humorous Cartoons about Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022), 48 p. Album couleur. 978-0-9896932-8-8

Smiling through the mask: A traveling book (2021), 48 p. Album couleur. ISBN: 978-0-9896932-7-1

Calendrier de l’Avent et du temps des Fêtes (2020), 84 p. Color. ISBN : 978-0-9896932-6-4

Une année de célébrations. Histoires d’escaliers (2017),112pp. ISBN 978-0-9896932-2-6

La sobriété volontaire. Une année sans alcool. (2015), 196pp. ISBN 978-0-9896932-2-6

Une année sans alcool: Les quatre premiers mois (2014), 128pp. ISBN 978-0-9896932-1-9

Québec-California. La vie qui bat. The wild life (iBook) (2013) ISBN 978-0-9896932-0-2

Québec-California. La vie qui bat. The wild life (2012) 90 pages. ISBN 978-0-615-64470-7

Histoires d’escaliers – Stairway Stories.  L’Âge de Raison-The Age of Reason (2011) ISBN 978-0-615-53076-5

Histoires d’escaliers – Stairway Stories. Sur le chemin des écoliers. On the way to school (2011) ISBN 978-0-615-46641-5

Histoires d’escaliers – Stairway Stories. Dans le Montréal de mon enfance. In the Montreal of my childhood (2010) ISBN 978-0-615-39167-0

4 thoughts on “My story

  1. I’ve very much enjoyed your stories of life growing up in Montreal. They make me think of my own childhood growing up at about the same time in a small city in the US where a large French Canadian population brought their language and culture to all aspects of the community. I attended a French Catholic school during my childhood there, so the scenes in your “sur le chemin des ecoliers” is especially entertaining and very reminiscent of my own life as a pupil of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. Thanks for the enjoyment your stories provide, and especially for your glossary explanations of the Canadian French dialect that you add each of your bandes!

    • This is great! I am glad you are enjoying my stories and that they remind you of your childhood. I am especially happy that you can relate to the stories although We grew up in different countries, speaking a different language in school. Some of our childhood experiences were the same. Danièle

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