Scarlett and Sophie Rickard are sisters who work together to make graphic novels. Sophie does the words and Scarlett draws the pictures. Scarlett has been drawing since before Sophie was born, and Sophie has been telling her what to draw since she learned to talk. 

They were brought up in the Ribble Valley, Lancashire in the shadow of Pendle Hill, and this landscape can be found in much of their work. They say they squabbled non-stop as children, and went in their own directions as young adults.

Scarlett has worked as a commercial artist, illustrator, signwriter and portrait painter. Sophie has worked as a civil servant, pub landlady, cabin crew and child counsellor. 

In their thirties, they both got mysteriously ill, and after a lot of confusion it transpired that they both have a hereditary disability that affects joints, nervous systems and energy levels. They made our first graphic novel Mann’s Best Friend (2017) as a kind of occupational therapy – Scarlett went back to saying “tell me what to draw” and they found collaborating on graphic storytelling was a good fit for their newly defined lives.
 
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was published in Autumn 2020 by SelfMadeHero. This graphic adaptation of Robert Tressell’s long and heavy-going socialist classic had taken around four years to put together and was a total labour of love. It was released in the US and Canada in December 2021 and will soon be available in translation in France. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was nominated in the category Best Adaptation in the 2022 Eisner Awards. 

The book changed the sisters lives, in the sense that making books is their main job now.

In Autumn 2022 they brought out No Surrender, also with SelfMadeHero, a graphic adaptation of Constance Maud’s suffrage classic, and is like a sister for The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Written in the same era (the 1910s), the book is another piece of authentic fiction written by a marginalised person about their experiences. Where The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is about being poor in a system designed by and for the rich, No Surrender is all about being female in a world designed by and for men.

Scarlett and Sophie work closely together at every stage of the process, despite living 200 miles apart. They each live with a long-suffering husband and collie dogs, and spend most of our time talking to each other online. 

"Working together is an absolute joy," they say, "and we wouldn’t have it any other way."

SCARLETT AND SOPHIE ONLINE

• Official Website
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Toot
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