Leanne Grabel is a writer, illustrator, performer and retired special education teacher. In love with mixing genres, Grabel has written and produced numerous spoken word, multimedia shows, including The Lighter Side of Chronic Depression, Anger: The Musical and The Little Poet. Her books include Lonesome & Very Quarrelsome Heroes, Flirtations, Short Poems by a Short Person, Badgirls and Gold Shoes, a collection of graphic prose poems. Grabel was the 2020 recipient of Soapstone’s Bread and Roses Award for contributions to women’s literature in the Pacific Northwest. Brontosaurus Illustrated was published in 2022 by The Opiate Books. In 2025, The Opiate Books released a pocket edition of the graphic novel. Both are available via the links below.
Brontosaurus Illustrated
Brontosaurus Illustrated is the story of a rape that is now fifty years old. Nina Gold was a nineteen-year-old Stanford sophomore riding a full math scholarship to the American dream. But her avid quest was trampled one spring break—like an ant by a boot—due to kidnapping and rape, a trauma the size of a brontosaurus. It began when two armed men in black ski masks slithered out of the shrubbery on a Baja beach as Nina and her friends were enjoying the sunset. They were tied up and stowed in the back of their own van, then raped on the sand. Of course, everything was different after that. Or was it? How could she know?
Brontosaurus Illustrated is a graphic rendition of this story and Nina’s consequent spin-out that lasted for decades as she searched for reasons, meanings, antidotes. And a way forward. Is Nina Gold a lucky victim, rife with muscular resilience, because she turned her life around? Or is she warped and ruined forever? Is she a better person for having been raped? Stronger? Tougher? Brighter? More empathetic? More poetic? Kinder? Or is she worse? Meaner? Colder? And much more detached? There is no way to know. But with a rape occurring every minute of every day, there are millions of stories that need to be told. Brontosaurus Illustrated is one of them. With drawings. And jokes.
Now as a Pocket Edition!
theopiatebooks.com 