Breaking Genres: An Interview with Graphic Novelist Tillie Walden
Nicolaia Rips chats with Tillie about boxes, representation, and the future of publishing in a fluid world.
In her award-winning and genre-defying graphic novels, Tillie Walden has created many worlds. She deftly moves between space, earth, and everywhere in between. She navigates cities ( A City Inside), palaces (The End of Summer), and small towns (I Love This Part). Her stories are of queer love, of fluidity, of exploration of self. They are important because they refuse to comport with rules written by others. Nicolaia Rips chats with Tillie about boxes, representation, and the future of publishing in a fluid world.
NICOLAIA RIPS: I was reading some interviews you did about The End of Summer and you have a quote where you talk about falling in and letting the story affect the layout. How do you find your medium affects the narratives you write? What do you look for when you’re creating a world? Does the freedom of fiction ever daunt you?
TILLIE WALDEN: It’s not exactly the freedom of fiction that daunts me. Sometimes just making a book is a little overwhelming. It’s a huge task and once you make it, it’s sort of around forever. That part of it is a little crazy. But the idea of fiction and of this endless possibility of creating a world, is always very exciting because what happens when you work on a book is, you have an idea, get really excited about it just like when you’re in an early relationship with someone. Everything is new. And then you’re like, oh okay this has been going on for awhile. I’m still here. We’re still doing this. And it gets tiresome. So whenever I have the opportunity to create a new world, as I come up with an idea, it’s a blast. I always try and come up with world elements that are things that I really enjoy drawing because with a graphic novel we have to draw something thousands of times. I really love drawing nature. I really like architecture. I’m constantly sort of shoving those elements into my book just because they’re fun to draw for me.
NR: On the subject of architecture and space — how does space, both literally but also figuratively, play into your work?
TW: A lot of times people see that element as a background in a comic. I teach comics, and I’m always telling my students to think not of your world as a background, but as another character. It’s this really special element that cartoonists get to have. In a movie, if you’re experiencing a really cool space, the shot is gonna change, and you’re going to go somewhere else. You can’t pause and put a finger on it, but you can do that in a comic. So, it’s even more important to make the space somewhere that the reader wants to see more of, and wants to be sort of invited into. I’m so obsessed with that. I always think about obstructing the reader’s view. Like partially open doors or stairways to make the reader want to go further into a room.
NR: Graphic novels are this interesting fluid medium, but you really took that a step further by publishing On A Sunbeam as a webcomic in its first iteration. Why did you do this instead of opting for maybe a more traditional form of publishing?
TW: I could publish On A Sunbeam as a webcomic because I had some financial stability from my previous books. This gave me some power in deciding what I wanted to do with my graphic novels. And books are expensive. Most of my audience are teenagers and, sure, some of them have money for that book but lots of them don’t. There is a barrier in the publishing world and in what I do. My books are only in libraries sometimes, but almost everyone now has an internet connection or a device. I was really proud of Sunbeam. I felt that the story was so important for all kinds of people to read that I thought the best way was just to make sure the whole thing was free to read online, even now that it’s been published in print.
NR: Do you see more of this popping up in the future? Do you think the internet is going to change publishing even more than it already has?
TW: I think so. I’m not one of those people who thinks that print books are dying and they’re going to go away. I think print books will always be with us. Possibly even more so in the years to come as the internet gets more tiresome. But I think what we’ll see more of probably is this marriage of the industry. And not really seeing the internet as a separate entity from publishing, but that is something that can work with the publishing of books. So that what’s going on with Sunbeam, right? It is a book. I am selling books, but it is also a webcomic. And they work very well together and that sort of freaks publishers out. We’ll be seeing more of that in the future.
NR: I love the idea of it existing in many forms. All the forms.
TW: Absolutely. Get it out there.
NR: Speaking of barriers, in On A Sunbeam you work within science fiction. That’s a genre typically dominated by cishet men and by a lot of rules and certain kinds of restraints. Where do you see the future of science fiction going? Do you think that genre is even going to stick around?
TW: I have no idea. The funny thing is, even though I did publish a sci-fi book, I know very little about sci-fi or science at all. I mean it. Just thinking about the future is terrifying. It’s not even something that I feel like I have the knowledge or understanding to really speak on eloquently. The genre will always stick around because the marketing people made it. Genre, people always forget that, it’s not really for the creator. It’s for people who are finding books, because if you are looking for a book and you want to read something about space, then these categories are going to really help you out. But as a writer, I’m not sitting down and saying, “Oh, I want to make something within this little box that someone else has created.” You just make a story, at the end, when the story is done, that’s when someone in the marketing team is like, “Oh, I think this is science fiction.” And I’m like, “Okay, fine. Do whatever you need to do.” But I always try and create without thinking of genres because then I’ll get trapped in there. And I think we should be able make stories much more creatively.
NR: You also finished your memoir last year, 2017, when you were 22. When I wrote my memoir I got a lot of older people and interviewers asking me what I had to write about. Like, I was so young, lived so little. What is there to write a memoir about? Do you think there’s something important about getting young narratives out there?
TW: I think there’s something important about getting any narrative
out there. I don’t care if your 15 or 50, or white, or black, or gay or straight. And interviewers always do that. They try and get you into these little categories again where it’s like, “Is this the young prodigy that I’m talking to? Who is this?” I don’t think any of that matters. I think people should just have the time and the freedom to tell stories in any capacity. But the problem is that no one has the money or the time. And so what I’m hoping I can do more of as I continue and make more money is to support artists who don’t have the freedom to sit down and take some time to write down their story. I don’t think that age matters. I don’t think any of that stuff matters.
“GENRE, PEOPLE ALWAYS FORGET THAT, IT’S NOT REALLY FOR THE CREATOR. IT’S FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE FINDING BOOKS, BECAUSE IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A BOOK AND YOU WANT TO READ SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE, THEN THESE CATEGORIES ARE GOING TO REALLY HELP YOU OUT. BUT AS A WRITER, I’M NOT SITTING DOWN AND SAYING, “OH, I WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING WITHIN THIS LITTLE BOX THAT SOMEONE ELSE HAS CREATED.”
NR: Do you have any other advice for young authors?
TW: Yeah, one of the best pieces of advice I got when I was in school and I was making comics because, I think it was my teacher, James, who told me to finish everything I start. Even if I start something that I don’t like halfway through. You learn as you get that skill to learn to finish things, then you actually have a shot at doing it. But if you can only ever write the beginning of a novel, you’ll never be a novelist. So learn to finish. Learn to work through that self doubt and fear. Because you get that real inspiration and that real high of creativity when you take something all the way to the finish line.
