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CSA: This is Story Behind the Story. I’m Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is Lilah Sturges. Lilah has worked in comics for the last decade, writing for a wide range of series and imprints. In the DC and Marvel universes, she’s worked on Jack of Fables, Thor: Season One, House of Mystery, and more. Her work also includes fantasy outside of the superhero genre, such as Alice’s Story, a graphic novel adaptation of the best-selling novel, The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. She won a Prism Award in 2013 for her graphic novel Infernal Compass, part of the Lumberjanes comic book series created by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooklyn A. Allen and Noelle Stevenson, about the adventures of a group of girls at a summer camp. Later this month, she will release the second graphic novel in that series, called The Shape of Friendship. That is the topic of our conversation today. Lilah Sturges, welcome to Story Behind the Story!


Lilah Sturges (LS): Hi! Thanks so much for having me!


CS: As a comic writer, you’re often coming into an existing franchise and writing stories and characters that originate with someone else’s ideas. What kind of stories do you find most compelling, and What would you like to see more of in comics?

(LS): Well, it's interesting when you come into a story universe if someone has already created because often in those situations, you find yourself constrained a bit in that you can't really change the characters from what they've been designed to be. So for instance, when I was writing a Thor story, I couldn't really have Thor come out of gay, I couldn't have Thor decide to give up being a superhero and move to Cleveland and start a family... These are things that you can't really do.
One of the things that I really like to see in stories is people evolving through making big choices. I like to see the repercussions of big choices and big life events, so sometimes I find myself a little at cross purposes when I'm telling those kinds of stories. But I think what I would like to see in terms of those big superhero universes especially is freedom for storytellers to do whatever they want, and not be constrained by ideas about continuity. Because I feel like that's a well that we keep going back to—it’s diminishing returns. It would just be fun to see all these characters re-presented in different ways that allow them to represent different things. I think that would be fascinating. There's this this guy on the internet who cosplays a Superman—a black man that cosplays as Superman—and I want to see black Superman! Like, I want to see that story. So I feel like taking the wheels off the car in some of these ways would be really fascinating. I'd like to see more of it. 


CS: It seems like in superhero comics (and fantasy and sci-fi genres in general), there are so many mechanics that you could invoke to make that happen, right? It's not really a restriction of the genre so much as a restriction of the way it's been done. 


LS: Right. It's more of a business concern that it is a storyteller concern.


CSA: As a storyteller, that must be a hard restriction to work with. 


LS: It is, but at the same time you know that when you're going into play with someone else's toys, that they are rules about how you get to play with those toys. It's kind of the deal and you live with it. 


CSA: Comics aren't the only kinds of stories you've written of course; you have two novels and a few short stories and edited collections of your own. How is your process different when you’re writing for comics than when you’re working in another medium? Other than what we just talked about of course— the, coming into someone else's world.


LS: Well you know, writing comics is, so much of it… you know, every time I come back into writing prose, it's a stark reminder that when you're doing comics, you are only doing part of the work. Because when I am writing a comic book script, I know that I have a group of creative professionals who come after me who tell the story also; Especially the line artist who is doing the bulk of the storytelling work. So I know that I can write in a panel description, “such and such a character is sad and she's lying down because she's sad,” and that's all I have to say. But when I'm writing that in a novel, I actually have to come up with pretty words to express that because I don't have these amazing pictures to tell the story for me. And so I'm always like, “oh gosh, I have to describe this?” It’s so hard!

CS: Yah much more descriptive than functional language!


LS: Yes! So, I think that’s the biggest difference. So when I go back to prose, which is something I love doing, it’s always a bit difficult to get going for that reason. I wrote a short story for a comic book called Lazarus that Greg Rucka does. And he wanted to do some prose stuff for backup materials. And so I worked on this short story, and it nearly killed me. Greg was so generous with his time and his editing skills that it all came together really, really well. But I thought I was going to die trying to write that thing.


CSA: Is it because you hadn't used that muscle in a while, or is there an emotional element to it too?

LS: Yah, there was. I think because I want to try my existence as a writer. I know that I write good dialogue, because I've been writing comic book dialogue for so long. But I wanted to also prove that I could write well-written prose, and that is, like you say, a whole different muscle. And trying to flex that muscle when it has been laying dormant for quite a while at that point, proved to be pretty taxing.


CSA: So I want to ask you a little bit about this—I mean, I want to ask you a LOT about this particular book, but just to start, what’s The Shape of Friendship about, and how does it fit into the Lumberjanes series and to Infernal Compass which is the previous Lumberjanes book that you wrote?


LS: Just to give you a little background, the Lumberjanes ongoing series—it's an ongoing tale about the five girls over the course of a single summer, and the adventures that they have at summer camp. The series proved to be pretty successful, and so Boom!—the publisher—decided they wanted to do a companion series of graphic novels, and they asked me to write them. One of the things that we wanted to do in the graphic novels to differentiate them from the series was make them a little more mature, a little more feelings-y, and the sense that we're exploring the relationships among the characters a little bit more. Maybe aiming for a slightly older reader, who might have started reading Lumberjanes when they were a little younger, and now maybe want something a little meatier. So we're trying to stay true to what Lumberjanes is, while also maybe going a little deeper with the characters and their relationships, and I thought that was a really fun challenge to take on. But at the same time I wanted to keep that Lumberjane spirit of wackiness and silliness. 
For each of these graphic novels, we’re focusing on two of the primary characters and in Shape of Friendship we’re focusing on Jo and April. Jo and April have always been best friends. Jo is now forming a friendship with another character named Barney, and it's  stressing April out. It becomes this question of, what does it mean to be truly yourself when other people have expectations of you? So to dramatize that whole notion, we have the little Pookas, who are these folklore characters who are shapeshifters that can turn into anything. The Pookas are living in a very well-decorated little cave—It's an abandoned mine in the woods. When the Lumberjanes go to visit them and they start telling them about the camp and how wonderful it is, the Pookas decide that they want to see it for themselves because they don't have anyone to take care of them and they would like to live a different life. So they trap the Lumberjanes in their cave and go back to camp impersonating the Lumberjanes to become the perfect campers. And so the Pookas are not being their true selves and so that's how it all ties together, and then madness ensures, of course.


CSA: One of the things I thought was interesting about the Pookas, once I  realized that there was that layering of different characters and different groups of characters being or not being themselves, it made me more interested in the fact that they're not really individuated for most of the story. Part of, I think, what they latch on to in the Lumberjanes is the fact that they are individuated. That it's a group of characters, but they each have their individual identities. Was that an intentional layer and part of the story?


LS: It started because it was just a funny joke that the Pookas are indistinguishable from each other, and their names are all Pooka—and it creates some confusion even among the Pookas, that they can't figure out which Pooka they’re talking about when they were talking. So it becomes ...that just  grew into a metaphor for identity, or an inability to have an identity. The Pookas are definitely latching on the Lumberjanes as a way to express an identity or to have an individual identity, so yes, definitely.


CSA: You said that both of these center on relationships that are in the midst of some kind of change, so in the first one it's Mal and Molly's developing romantic relationship, and then in this one it's the evolution of April and Jo’s friendship as they get older, and as Jo comes into herself a little bit more. These relationships exist in the comic books themselves so what are you trying to do differently as you're exploring them in more depth in this format?


LS:  I think what we're trying to do is allow the characters to grow a little bit and grow up a little bit, while still keeping within the framework of the stories. We know that you know these girls are going to get older, and we don't want them to have to be little kids forever. I think there's this very special time in a person's life — and it's in that middle school time — when there's this tension between childhood and oncoming adulthood, and you're not sure where you stand. So you start having all these questions about, “What does it mean to have real relationships with people who aren't in my family?” and “What does it mean to be me in the way that I define myself, as opposed to me in the context of how I've grown up and have been seen by the people around me?” These are really important questions for young people. In the previous book, The Infernal Compass, one of the things that we really try to show is that Molly's problem, as she's dealing with losing her friends because of this magical compass—she really can't articulate what her problem is. A lot of what we're trying to do in these Lumbejanes stories is give kids language to express these feelings that they have. That very common feeling; these feelings of ‘I'm worried about how my friends are going to react to this relationship that I'm having,’ ‘I'm worried about how my best friend is going to feel if I become friends with somebody else,’ these baseline really important things for people that age, but they speak to something larger about all human relationships. It's just more fundamental at that age.

CS: I think you bring up an interesting point—which is one of the features I noticed about this book and about some of the other Lumberjane stuff that I looked at in preparation for this interview—was the ways that there are different levels of educational components built in. Some of them, like this, are woven into the fabric of the story and you get a little bow summation at the end to tell you what the lesson is, like in a lot of like middle grade novels and things like that. But then there are these... there's a  more explicit side, where you have the Pooka's teaching a craft to Jen the camp counselor, and literally showing kids how to do a craft and be part of it. And then on the less explicit side, you have this this thing that's a feature of all of the Lumberjanes comics, where there are these exclamations, they’ll shout something like, instead of “holy smokes!” it'll be “Jackie Joyner-Kersee!” —things like that. I'm curious how you see those elements coming together and especially, because you are also a mother yourself,  how do these fit into the world of education for kids this age? How do you keep it a fun and balanced experience as a writer?


LS: Well just to start, the Feminist exclamations are one of my absolute favorite parts of Lumbejanes. They are so great! Our amazing assistant editor Sophie keeps a spreadsheet of all of the exclamations so they're not repeated.


CSA: I was wondering about that!


LS: I’ve thought, “Oh this would be good!” and then I go to look at the spreadsheet and someone else's already done it. My favorite one that I came up with was “Audre Lorde have mercy”—


CSA: Right! That was in Infernal Compass! It’s pretty good.

LS: I (?) myself with that one. Anyway, yes. The idea it to do a shotgun approach, where we primarily want the kids to come away having had fun, right? That's the ideal. But we know that kids who read Lumberjanes especially, and kids in general, are smart. And so if we say, ‘Audre Lorde have mercy,’ they might go, “Well who is Audre Lorde?” And then they might Google Audre Lorde and they might learn something. I think what we're trying to do is present this smorgasbord of ideas for kids, and then they can take what is appealing to them and use that to hopefully evaluate their life and what's going on around them.


CSA: So you were a reader and a fan of this series before you started writing for it. How did elements like that land with you as an adult, and what in general made the series compelling to you?


LS: I mean that to me was the absolute fun of it, and the fact that it's fun first was always a big deal to me. The fact that it's very clever fun, in the sense that we're aiming a little over the kids heads and assuming that the kids are going to reach up and grab what's being lobbed at them ... that was always the kind of thing… you know, I was the kind of kid who, when I was little, I was always reading above my age level and I always wanted to know more than what was being said to me. I just thought, “well what's the next thing? Let's be on this! Tell me more!” So I think that those are the kids that Lumberjanes is really going for, and that's what I really love. Also, it’s fun, it’s funny…


CSA: It is!


LS: It’s clever, and it can be really frenetic and silly. You've got a character like Ripley who is just funny, just by virtue of existing. There is no character that I've ever worked on that's more fun to write than Ripley just because she can't not be funny, and that's a fantastic character to have access to. But it's funny, thinking about myself as a mom and and raising my two girls—this is exactly the kind of book that I wish there had been more of when my girls were little, because they would have really latched on to it for all those reasons that I just expressed. When I meet kids, when I go and talk about the book and I meet kids, I'll see these girls who remind me so much of my daughters; when I was in Los Angeles at this bookstore signing... usually when I go I give a little talk because I'm expecting to talk to like middle schoolers, and everyone in the audience of this event was 8 or 9 years old. So I was like, “well, they're not going to sit still for my presentation,” so I just brought them up and stayed with me and we improvised a story about dinosaurs which was amazing and we had so much fun. But what struck me was how smart these kids were, and how there was one little girl in particular who knew more about Lumberjanes than I did. Just the fact that she's able to connect with it on that level is so powerful. There's those things that we connect with when we're that age always come to mean so much to us, and I think about the things that affected me when I was that age; I was a very, very young reader of the Dune novels. I read Dune when I was 9…

CSA: Oh wow, that’s really young!

LS: ...and so a lot of my thinking is colored to this day by by the politics and ecology of Dune, which is really weird thing to say but it's kind of true. 


CSA: I think you're really right that the books we love as little kids really stick with us. I think you ask anyone, “What was your favorite book as a kid?” and it doesn't matter if they're 15 or 50 they're going to remember, and they can probably talk your ear off about it. One of the things that you mentioned, both before and then when you were just talking about Ripley now, was that these characters have these very strong voices of their own, and that coming in midstream you're  adapting to their voice. But I imagine there's a balance there as a storyteller about bringing your … what's unique about you into this world and it's existing rules. How do you do that and how do you balance that?


LS: That's a really good question. I think one of the things to keep in mind about a story like Lumberjanes is that the girls, as individuals, are all aspects of one larger psychological energy. 


CSA: Yah, they’re like archetypes.


LS: Right. They all have something to say about different aspects of being a person, and so it's making these connections in your mind of... okay well, Ripley is kind of like my Id—like this is … “Without any restrictions how am I going to behave?” Mal is kind of like your fears, and April is your boldness. Every one of these characters has some archetypal element to them that you can really plug your own experience into, and that makes it really easy to connect with them because we all have aspects of these characters within us because that's how they're designed. So that wasn't really that difficult in this case; I've had other writing assignments where I didn't really connect with the characters that much, and it was hard and unpleasant and I didn't like it. But for Lumberjanes, it was very, very easy to connect with these girls, and to internalize their voices and be able to write them.


CSA: What are you trying to bring from yourself in this? I think—presumably—you get hired as a writer not just for your ability to slot in, but also for what you bring on your own. What do you think makes your graphic novel versions of Lumberjanes different from the comic, or different from what somebody else might do in the same situation?


LS: That’s a really great question. One of the things I talk about when talking about creativity is that the most valuable asset that you have as a creator is your own distinct voice. You have your own web of associations in your mind, you have your own unique set of experiences to draw on, you have your own memories, you have your own set of feelings, and, it's on one level  ineffable and undescribable. Every writer that you can think of has a voice that's unique in some way. It's not really something you can put down as a set of bullet points necessarily, but you know when you see it. Then, it's because people are so complex and multifaceted, but at the same time there are things that are more important to me than might be to other people. I think that the things that are most important to me when writing Lumberjanes is explicating feelings that are difficult to express, because a lot of my life has been spent trying to understand myself. Because I am a person who, being a transgender woman, I didn't really have language to express who I was growing up and that made for a lot of confusion in my life. It wasn't until I made this realization like, “oh, that's what this is!” Now I have the language to press it and I've context. I think providing the language and the context to young readers is really, really important because that's how you are able to process how you're feeling. When we ... when you're looking at a kid who's really struggling, a lot of that is that they're struggling because they don't know how to say what they're feeling. They don't understand what they're feeling, and so that to me as a big part of what Lumberjanes is about in that feelings sense. I think also I really like comedy. Lumbejanes gives you this great opportunity to do very broad, very silly comedy and I really love how the artist that I'm working with on these books — Polterink — she's so expressive and so good at doing comedy and so good at taking the cues that I give and bringing them forward in all these really delightful ways. In Shape of Friendship, there are these hummingbirds that are very important part of—


CSA: yes! 

LS: —the story so Polterink who's that's her nom de plume; her name is Claudia. She's Austrian, and she was talking about how in German they're called Kolibri (hummingbirds) and she really loves them, and so she kept finding ways to put them in these funny little places. There's one panel of this one sitting on Ripley's head, and that was all her. She just has this really great sense of fun and sense of humor that gives so much to the book. I think those are probably the two things that I emphasize more when I'm writing Lumberjanes that maybe other writers might emphasize different things.


{break}


CSA: If you're just joining me, my guest today is Lila Sturges whose book The Shape of Friendship follows the summer camp adventures at the Lumberjanes at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types. One thing I found interesting about Lumberjanes in contrast to some of the other projects of yours that I've read, like the  Magicians / Alice story, is that the story is told exclusively on the writing side through dialogue. There aren't the “meanwhile” or other narration bits at the top to move the story along—It's just the dialogue. Is that a conscious choice? Is that a thing that’s endemic to Lumberjanes as a whole? Were you going for a particular effect?


LS: It definitely is something that Lumberjane does. We don't get narrative captions in Lumberjanes; that’s not something we do. I think there's a couple reasons for that. One, Lumberjanes is a lot more about action. It's about taking what's internal, and rendering it as the external. Dramatizing what's internal. We don't want to just narrate internal things in Lumberjanes cuz that's not the project. In the book, like Alice's story, it's very much about what the character Alice is thinking and feeling as these events are happening. And especially because, in that case Alice's story is a response to the novel the Magicians, so it’s retelling the story of the Magicians, but from another character's point of view. I really wanted to dig deep into what that specific character was thinking and feeling. It's really more about what are your goals with the story? What are you trying to highlight or emphasize?


CSA: Yah. So there’s a vibe in this book and the series as a whole of teaching by example, which we talked about in terms of giving kids the language to vocalize their feelings. But there's also ...characters make mistakes, but they pretty much always act with good intentions and they learn from their mistakes and from each other. I think that impacts the way that you can express conflict and drama; it's the drama and conflict... yeah, I think it impacts the way that you can express conflict and drama and I'm interested to hear what you, as a storyteller, how you approach that and how you think about those  different strategies for dramatizing and carrying a story along and dealing with those character conflicts.


LS: Sure, that's a very good question because the meat of drama is conflict, right? And so when we're working on the story or trying to come up with a story, one of the first things we start thinking about is (what I start thinking about is): what is the primary conflict here? Within the Lumberjanes, there's this rule when we're talking about Lumberjane stories, and they're created very collaboratively with the editorial staff of Boom! and Shannon Waters who's the the overseer of Lumberjane franchise, to make sure the stories that are told in the Lumberjane meet the criteria of what makes Lumberjanes Lumberjanes and one of the things is is that the characters can't really be in direct conflict with each other. The Lumberjanes themselves, because their friendship is their defining characteristic. They can't act against the nature of that friendship. So then you might think, well how do you tell the story with these characters if they can’t be in conflict with each other? Well, they can... what they can't do is they can’t fight with each other, but there's all sorts of underlying concerns and confusion and insecurities that we have amongst our peers that are really fruitful ways of getting at conflict. Then, our primary conflicts within the terms of the story are the weird monsters and cryptids and things that are out in the forest, although in most of the situations that we find in Lumbejanes, none of them are really malicious either; they're just misunderstood. I think that speaks to  an overall ethos of Lumberjanes that nobody is really bad. Everyone that we're having conflict with is either being misunderstood, or has a misunderstanding, or has a problem that we don't understand, and I think for the context of the Middle School reader, this is everybody that we're interacting with in our lives. Every other kid... the kids we go to school with aren't evil, we are just looking at them in ways that lend malice to what they're doing or they don't understand us. It's always a lack of communication and understanding, not malice.


CSA:  Yeah. I think, for adults too, a lot of our interpersonal conflict does come from maybe making assumptions about how someone else is, what someone else's intentions are or... yeah, that, I think a lot of our conflict comes from making assumptions about what other people's intentions are or motivations or any of those sorts of things. But it is rarely a feature of adult novels that you have something like this; that the approach to resolving conflict is purely collaborative. And I think in the Shape of Friendship, the the central conflict between the main characters, putting the Pookas aside for just a moment (as cute as they are), is April is insecure about her changing friendship with Jo and yet she's not acknowledging that to anyone, including herself. I thought it was so interesting drawing that kind of conflict out over the course of the story. It seems to me so challenging. Did you find it difficult or was it … what techniques do you use as you're trying to draw this out?


LS: For me, again, that goes back to: it's an exploration of feelings that presents itself in trying to find the language and the concept that match the feelings. What we see April doing over the course of the story is trying to find a voice for the feelings that she's having. Cos at first she's denying them, next she's she's wildly overcompensating...


CSA: yes

LS: ….by acting as though her friendship with Jo is over, and that she's literally giving Barney a list of things to do for Jo for when she's not around, because she's only able to see these black and white scenarios. As the story progresses, she is able to start to see this is not a black and white situation; Jo can be friends with more than one person. Jo has needs that are apart from April's needs, and we start to unpack these feelings and express them with words, then April is finally able to get on board and say, “okay, I understand this. Now this isn't a threat to me.” That's the process that we're trying to show over the course of the story.


CSA: So, if you don’t mind me switching tracks right now, one of the features about Lumberjanes that I think works well—in part because it's in this world where the friendship really is the focus in a lot of ways—is the way that it normalizes queerness. There are several LGBTQ characters each with a different queer identity, and their queer identities are mentioned explicitly. They're part of the background, too, but the focus is on the adventures everyone is having and their friendship. Why is that important to you, and how do you achieve that balance between making it clear that queerness exists in this world, and not making that take center stage and take away from the rest of what the characters are.


LS: That's important. That's something that is really inherent to the series. In a lot of ways it's a very queer series. It is queering children's fiction in a very specific way, which is that it is denying the existence of heteronormativity, ci-normativity. It's  saying that these things are not operative in this world and they are not relevant to the stories that we’re telling. 
We have Jo, who is a trans girl. We have Barney, who's a non-binary person. We have Mal and Molly who are both queer girls, and their existence as queer is presented as status quo. It's not presented as something that is at odds with the world in which they're living and that is the most important aspect of it, because what we want to present to readers is a world in which these things are completely normal. They should be. That just comes out of simple respect for these identities. So many of the people that work on Lumberjanes are queer themselves—I think the vast majority, probably, and so this is something that that resonates really deeply with the folks who work on the series. And it resonates deeply for me you know personally you know because I think about the way that Jo, in particular as a trans girl, that her story is handled in this very beautiful way. And it's told in this metaphor of which camp she belonged to or doesn't belong to, that she she started out at the boys camp and then she realized she'd be happier at the girls camp, and that's how they explained Jo's trans-ness in this very concrete way. And the thing that I always think about when people ask me about this aspect of Lumberjanes is how much of a difference it would have made in my life if I could have read something like that when I was 12, and I often will start to cry when I talk about this because it's so powerful..just, normalization of Queer identities, this depiction of Queer identities, the representation of Queer identities—It doesn't just legitimize them, but it also informs the reader that this is a valid way to be. For me as a trans person, I didn't know what being trans was. I didn't know that that was a thing, and so it was impossible for me to understand who I was. And so a book like that would have radically changed my understanding of myself and allowed me to process my experience in very different ways.


CSA: I love what you said about the way that Jo's storyline is as a trans girl is handled in the comics; about how she's trying to decide between the boys camp or the girls camp, cuz it does that same thing you were talking about: it gives kids the language to think about and talk about their experiences, but it's done within the context of this adventure, and also a very normal experience of like going to summer camp.


LS: Yeah, exactly. Exactly! That's what the real hallmark of Lumberjanes is making those things really concrete.


CSA: Well, and the vibe I’m getting, the impression that I get from the book as a whole and as we go through this conversation is that part of the central ethos of these books is showing a world in which everyone acts the way they should. Not necessarily in every little micro interaction, but on the big broad hold, they're being the people! They're acting appropriately, they're being kind and empathetic, and  actively creating—without  being activists—actively creating a world that is better than the one that we have right now.


LS: Yeah, for sure. I think that's an essential facet of Lumberjanes, and I think that’s part of what makes it such a powerful reading experience. 


CSA: I think we're seeing more of that in general in literature and in other types of storytelling too right now. More examples of: here is the world as it could be. One of the things you occasionally see in terms of criticism of that is, “oh well, it's not realistic.” How do you respond to that critique?


LS: I mean, who cares, right? It was never meant to be naturalism. This is not the Red Badge of Courage, this is Lumberjanes! We're dealing in ideal here. We're talking about, we're explicitly talking about the world that we would like to see rather than the world as it is. And so who cares if it's not what the real world is? It's not, it's fantasy. That's what what fantasy is! Fantasy is imagining a world that feels better than the world we live in.


CSA: Yeah, and it's always funny to me when you hear people lob these critiques at superhero comics when they suddenly introduce a non-white character or a queer character or something else, cuz it's like, okay soyou can suspend a disbelief around superpowers, but not around this particular way that the world could be different?


LS: I think there was that whole defense of white supremacy and sexual assault in the Game of Thrones  universe, where it's like, “well, that's how it was in the 14th century.” It's like, there weren't that dragons in the 14th century dude. These weren't necessary aspects for creating a fantasy, and whether they're legitimate aspects for the type of story you're telling is a whole other question, but they're not necessitated and I think that's the important question. It’s like, we don't have to have this if we don't want to.


{Break}


CSA: I’m Clara Sherley Appel and you're listening to Story Behind the Story on KSQD 90.7 FM Santa Cruz. If you're just joining me my guest today is Lilah Sturges. Lumberjanes takes place at a summer camp. Can you say the name of the summer camp first of all? Because I have a great deal of difficulty pronouncing it.


LS: I cannot, and the fact that I can never remember the name of it is...there's a joke about that where Ripley tries to say the same of the camp to the Pookas and fails miserably. I could not tell you to save my life what the name of the camp is.


CSA: I'm going to try to say it based on what I found on Wikipedia. It is worth noting I'll spell this out on the blog post on the website at some point. It is not spelled in any way that like reflects normal English spelling: Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types. Do you have experiences from your youth in summer camp, or do you kids go to summer camp?

LS: (laughs) Oh god, My summer camp experience was a complete nightmare and I don't want to talk about it. It was absolutely terrible. I know there are kids who have a great experience at summer camp. I was not one of them. I think one of the things that's really interesting about the name of the camp, when you read some of the surrounding matter around Lumberjanes: it's very interesting, because very clearly the camp was at one time called Miss whatever's camp for girls, and that has been edited out—literally!— on the sign and changed from girls to hardcore lady types. Which is very important because not everybody at the Lumberjanes camp necessarily identifies as a girl including Barney who is non-binary but is who a Lumberjane. There's also a very interesting to me, and a statement of purpose. In the first few issues, they have this Lumberjane's Creed, and it talks about what it means to be a Lumberjane. And then there is—crossed out!— a line or two; and there's a little note that says some words about God or something, and so it is expressly denying the influence of religion in Lumberjanes. So it's saying we are taking this institution and we are amending it for our own purposes. I talk about Queering as a verb a lot in regard to Lumbejanes, but one of the things we're doing is explicitly and overtly queering what a girl's summer camp is. We’re saying no, we're not allowing normativity to enter into this experience. We're explicitly denying it; we're explicitly editing it for our purposes, and I think there's something really clever about that. I've never asked Shannon about that, but I think next time I talk to her I'm going to be like, “so what was going on there? Cos I had a feeling that it’s this, and now I've said it in an interview that it's this, but I want to make sure.” (laughs)


CSA: I think that's really interesting, and it goes back to that  thing that things are both explicit and in the background; they're not necessarily the central focus, but they're there and there's no way to pretend that they're not there.


LS: Exactly, exactly, yeah. It’s a really fascinating aspect of the series.


CSA: It’s a really fascinating series in general. This is ot necessarily something that I would have picked up immediately on my own, but I have so many friends who are into it, and I, of course I have read a lot of your other stuff. I find diving into this world, it's just so... it's like diving into tropical waters. It's such a pleasant place to hang out.


LS: It is such a pleasant place to hang out, isn't it? It's just so nice, and the stakes are low, and you know that everybody loves each other, and everyone's going to be okay. I think that, especially when we live in such troubled times where we don't know from day to day if everything's going to be okay, it's nice to be able to have these worlds where we know that everyone's safe everyone treats each other with love and kindness.


CSA: It's a different kind of escapism


LS: It’s a very healthy kind of escapism I think. It’s good for you.


CSA: One of the things that I had read is that in the comics, though not as far as I could tell in this graphic novel, everyone ends with a mixtape. Can you tell me about that?


LS: I don't know about the mixtape. That is not something I did.


CSA: If you were making a soundtrack for the Shape of Friendship what would be on it?


LS: Oh my gosh! Um, I don't know, I would have to email you later. My taste in music is so basic, it’s embarrassing to admit. It would be something like, “That's What Friends Are For,” or something awful like that. I can't even begin to imagine.


CSA: Who is that by?

LS: Who sings it? (sings part of the chorus) Who sings it...I don't even know! Leave me alone! (laughs)


CSA: Okay okay, one more: If you were designing a series of your own, a comic series of your own what would be the features of it?


LS: I’m always doing that. I’m always designing comic characters of my own. The things that I'm thinking about lately are, how can I dramatize feelings or conflicts that matter to me. For instance, I've got a pitch that I'm working on right now where one of the central elements is two male friends who love each other deeply, and aren't ashamed to show their feelings for each other. And because I see so much and have experienced so much in my own path of the destructive nature of toxic masculinity, and how it prevents boys and men from loving each other. When I transitioned socially, and began to be accepted in women's spaces, one of the things that really struck me and it was what I had hoped for, is the the depth and closeness that women can feel toward each other because women are allowed to feel towards each other in our culture. Women can hug, women can say, “I love you.” We can share feelings, and it's okay, and all these things are thumbs up from society. Boys don't have access to that, and so I wanted to create a space, a storytelling space to examine what if we lived in a place where boys could love each other as friends the same way girls can, and what does that look like? So I devised a whole world around that concept, with these two boys at the center of it. It's kind of this western with wild robots and stuff. That's the the overt plot is all the robots, but the focus of it is these two boys. I think that for me, I want to tell stories going forward, is I especially want to... my primary focus is and always will be writing stories that represent and depict LGBTQ youth cuz that's  my particular mission as a writer. I want to center those people and tell or retell stories that center them. But really, it's it's anything that catches my attention, and what I think this is something that needs to be represented better; This is something that would be healing for people to be able to experience. I think that's what I'm most interested in as a writer these days.


CSA: Things that are healing?


LS: Yeah.


CSA: I actually really like when you're telling me about that story that you set it in a  cowboy western world because I think that is, in a lot of ways, the locusts in pop culture of a slightly earlier age of like the most toxically masculine ideals.


LS: Exactly, exactly! Very much on purpose.


CSA: What is that called? Is it available?


LS: It's not out. It's not. It hasn't been bought or anything, so I can't really talk about it anymore than that but that's the basic idea again.


CSA: Well I really hope it gets picked up! What else are you working on these days? What can we look forward to in addition to the Shape of Friendship later this month?


LS: Sure. We've got also the following on the Magician's: Alice’s the story is a five-issue magician mini-series from Boom!, and the first issue comes out November 6th. There will be a third Lumberjanes that focuses on Ripley and Jen and will come out next year. We're just starting on that right now, It's very exciting! I have a graphic novel that I've been working on with an artist named Meghan Carter that is absolutely wonderful, and it's got a young trans protagonist, and that's going to be announced next year. I've got a lot... I've got a couple things that are just getting started right now that I'm really excited and of course can’t talk about, but those are the main things.


CSA: Well, Thank you so much for joining me today, Lilah Sturges. Listeners, you can pre-order Lumberjanes: the Shape of Friendship anywhere comic books are sold. Follow Lilah on Twitter at lilah_sturges. Anything else you want to say before we leave?


LS: Just, Thanks so much for having me on and for this really lovely discussion.


CSA: Thank you
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