Tracing the Rivers
by Aaban Aslam
Tracing the Rivers is a piece of creative writing developed in response to North Devon’s landscapes, rivers, and cultural history. The story follows Kate as a summer project draws her into conversations about place, memory, and belonging, moving between towns, coastlines, and generations.
The work is intended for future development as a graphic novel. The text is shared here in a script like format, with image descriptions indicating how visual elements will unfold.
Alongside the narrative, selected images from the Beaford Archive are placed in dialogue with the text, responding to locations and themes as they emerge. These are shown alongside work in progress sketches by Abaan, offering an insight into the evolving visual language of the story. Together, these visual conversations form part of the work’s development, with a full graphic novel planned as a future outcome, growing directly from the material presented here.