My Kirkus Q&A with Jen Wang
February 15th, 2018 by jules
“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.
It never really occurred to me (having missed much of the zeitgeist surrounding RuPaul as TV icon) what fun it would be to be a child watching Drag Race. ALL those costumes. ALL that makeup. ALL that make-believe! I can see that as a fertile field for a book – and for a book like this -a boy thinking, “man, that looks SO fun,” and then finding a friend who helps him to make a space for himself. I love it.
Do you know I’ve never seen that show? I’ll have to look it up.
I do love this book. So do my girls. Ada provided one of the questions for the Q&A. They’ve read the book twenty times in a row.