My Kirkus Q&A with Jen Wang
Thursday, February 15th, 2018
“For a while, I’d wanted to write a story about a character whose super power was making clothes that transformed the wearer. I couldn’t think of a premise that fit until I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race one day, and suddenly everything clicked. I’ve also wanted to do something fun, like a Disney princess movie but with more queer themes attached, and everything fell in line perfectly from there.”
Over at Kirkus today, I talk with Jen Wang, pictured here, about her new graphic novel, The Prince and the Dressmaker (First Second, February 2018).
The Q&A is here. Next week, I’ll follow up here at 7-Imp with a bit more art from the book.
Until tomorrow …
Photo of Jen Wang taken by Ye Rin Mok.
“I’ve mentioned in a few interviews my desire to see more stories about brown weirdos, because that’s something I never saw as a kid — brown people who were outside the ‘mainstream.’ Growing up in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood and attending schools with a similar demographic, there weren’t many kids who were into books or writing or art or music. And that’s not to say that those two things don’t go together; I just never saw it in my sort of insulated world. I didn’t start making zines or really get into punk until I was in college, but these are both things that if I’d had any exposure to as a twelve-year-old, I would have eaten up.”
Have you seen Chris Harris’s I’m Just No Good at Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups, illustrated by Lane Smith? You may have already read about this book, as it’s received a whole host of starred reviews.
