TLR Contributors Discuss Graphic Narratives

With TLR’s Issue 30, we are looking to publish more graphic narratives in the form of comics, graphic stories, visual poetry, collage, schematics, or blends thereof. In honor of this new submission invitation, TLR’s Ann Beman spoke to two of our past contributors, Justin Ancheta and April Thompson. Ancheta created one of the few hybrid text/graphic pieces we’ve published, “The F-14 Tomcat Aerial Combat Guide for Parents of Children Who Stutter and Cope Through Fixation with Military Aircraft,” in Issue 27, while Thompson is the author of the short story “Obsession,” in Issue 24, and creator of our Issue 28’s cover art. 

AB: How often does your work involve visual elements?

JA: I love to involve visual elements in my lyric essays as much as I can, whether it’s through diagrams, tables, pictures, or any kind of component which conveys story information visually. I especially love to do it if I can do that in a way which defies genre conventions or subverts reader expectations. There’s something deeply liberating about that as someone who thinks a lot about crafting stories from marginalized perspective. And as someone who loves reading stories like that, I also find it disarming, even disturbing as it makes me stop and really think about the story in which the writer is immersing me. 

For example, I’m working on a lyric essay about a lapsed friendship which left a lasting mark on me. But my memories and feelings about it are fragmented. So, it made sense to me to deliver it in a fragmented way, where the reader and I are both trying to piece things together. Shirley Harshenin’s award-winning essay, Invisible Walls: A Decentered Sticky Note Narrative is one such example of a fragmentary visual piece, where the piece as a whole becomes one entire visual element.

AB: As a reader of graphic narrative, what would you like to see more in literary journals?

AT: I love quick, observational drawings and while I really appreciate the work that goes into more polished, thought-out pieces, I’d love to see more rapid-fire drawings make their way into print. There’s something really interesting to me about how fast the hand moves before the brain catches up, so these kinds of drawings can take on a really special quality. I’m inspired by Michael Taussig’s book on field drawings, I Swear I Saw This, as a meditation on such drawing.

JA: I would absolutely love to see more creative non-fiction lyric essays that use visual elements to break with conventions of form. I’d love to see more writers using the visual as an augmentation to, or even as a substitution for, what’s told by prose on the page. 

There is something deeply empowering about what I will for my purposes call, hybrid essays–lyric essays which hybridize the power of prose with the power of visual storytelling. It’s a powerful avenue for marginalized writers to tell stories which may be too difficult to tell, access or process with just prose alone. It’s an expansive way for marginalized people to express their experiences with trauma, queerness, disability, or racism. Because often times I find myself wanting to write stories about my experiences, in a desire to bridge a gap of knowing between myself, and a reader who may be from a completely different walk of life to mine. Because in bridging that gap, I hope to bring a reader to developing empathy and a sense of understanding for someone like me. And more often than not, I find that words aren’t enough. Or I may not even have the words to fully capture that experience.

As Zoë Bossiere (Managing Editor of Brevity) wrote in their introduction to the 2023 lyric essay anthology The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins, “Much like when a person openly identifies as queer, identifying an essayistic style as ‘lyric’ provides a blueprint for others on the margins to name their experiences–a form through which to speak their truths.”

I feel like visual elements can be a really powerful part of that blueprint.

AB: What would you, as a creator of hybrid work, like to see more of in literary journals?

JA: I would love to see more literary journals being open to publishing hybrid lyric work; work that uses and even embraces visual elements as part of its storytelling, whether it’s through a form like a hermit crab essay, or a style like a comic strip or graphic novel. I think of work like Chelsea Biondolillo’s haunting and enigmatic piece The Story You Never Tell, or Architectural Survey Form: 902 Sunset Strip by Berry Grass.

I know that there are so many stories out there, stories within writers who struggle with their relationship to their bodies, their gender, or their sexuality, stories that are waiting to be told. We need those stories out there, now more than ever. I think of writing like Unknown Number by Blue Neustifter as an example. That story works so well because of its visual elements and how important they are to its story. It wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful as it was if it had just been written and presented as prose. 

I wonder to what extent people in the literary world see graphic storytelling as a realm wholly different from or marginal to literary non-fiction, just like how people viewed (and arguably continue to view) creative non-fiction as a whole. Yet graphic memoirs like Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (a winner of Canada Reads 2023) have been recognized for the power of their storytelling. Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (another graphic memoir) just won a Pulitzer Prize. 

These stories, and the way we choose to tell them, may be from the margins, but they are no less worthy of being a vital part of today’s literary conversation. 

AB: What are your favorite types of graphic narrative?

AT: I love absurdity in graphic narratives. Michael DeForge is one of my favourite artists for the way he captures the absurd with humor and existential dread. There is a spaciousness to his work that leaves me meditating on it long after reading. The collection, “If you steal” by Norwegian cartoonist, Jason, is another book that comes to mind for its mix of humor and darkness. His comic, “Polly Wants a Cracker” about Frida Kahlo as a hitman is great, and I like that his characters are silent and his drawing style is sparse. Long Time Relationship is a beautiful book published by Canadian Press, Drawn & Quarterly, which operates out of Montreal. The book compiles drawings by Canadian artist, Julie Doucet, who has been doing amazing work for decades particularly around found-images/discarded graphics. All of these works inspire me for their balance of the humorous and the grim, as well as the line between detail vs. spaciousness. 

AB: Where do you find your favorite graphic narratives, whether they be comics, graphic stories, visual poetry, collage, schematics, or blends thereof?

JA: First, I generally love to look for lyric essay collections (The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins, A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, and The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms are all incredible books to read). Literary journals that do publish visually diverse work, like Diagram, Grain, and The Fiddlehead are also great places to look too. 

But what I also love to do is go to my local (independent!) comic book store or book store and see what’s out there in the world of graphic novels and graphic memoir. It’s how I discovered books like Dumb: Living without a Voice by Georgia Webber, or Maia Kobabe’s book Gender Queer, both of which are moving lyrical visual explorations of living with a disability and discovering one’s own queerness.

AB: As an artist, what draws you (pun intended) to graphic narrative?

AT: I like the nonverbal aspects of what a graphic work can show. With faces, I have found people can project really funny backstories. There’s a base fascination humans have with reading faces that I really like to tap into. As a writer, it helps me give up control. I draw sporadically and impulsively but in retrospect, the faces and critters tell the mood I was in, the media I was consuming, even world events/trending culture. I like this subconscious process. 

AB: As a writer, what draws you (pun intended) to graphic narrative?

JA: I think there’s so much potential in graphic narrative for impactful storytelling. There’s so much potential there, especially for marginalized writers, to tell their stories to the world in a way which transcends the limitations of voice and words. As someone with a speech disorder, that’s been really important for me. How can we express the unexpressable? How can we tell a story that we’re still trying to piece together, because of the barriers posed by white supremacy, queerphobia, or ableism? I think graphic narrative (in all of its myriad lyrical forms and shapes) is a beautiful realm to explore that. It’s beautiful, it’s challenging, and it’s subversive, but most importantly of all, it’s empowering.