The experiences that they have are not my experiences, aside from the fact that I also did go to Saint Joseph in Huron, which is the park that they go to in the book. Obviously I was a young girl at the cottage, and I had the fat young friend there too, but the characters are not really that connected to my life. I used some things as a beginning point, and created something fictional from that. Well I use to go to the cottage, but I didn’t have any of those challenges.

Would you say this mirrors any of your life? So for me, the idea of being these young girls, and having this chunk of their lives, and analyzing that part, and all the sort of changes that would happen, even if were all going to be during this one summer of their lives… it was something I wanted to show. And I’m also kind of obsessed with transitional moments. I felt the background would be a good setting for a story. So it was this like solid, integral part of my childhood… When it comes to comics, especially with this one, I thought of the atmosphere. And every summer, you went to the cottage. What were some of your ideas for writing this story? The way that stories get told in my experience in comics is that it opens opportunities to tell in so many different angles.

But I would say now that I’ve done comics, I think that they’re just an incredible medium for telling stories. I was really into the idea of working with another artist than I was in comics per say. So I’ve done a lot of actors work, and a lot of work in sort of feminist collectives and stuff.

I’ve actually done a lot of theatre, and I’ve done a lot of performance art, which for me was like a more accessible version of theatre. But I always really liked working on collaborations. That was my first work in comics.ĭid you ever think you’d get into comics? So we did the mini-comic of “Skim,” and that got purchased by “Groundwood Books.” And that was our first graphic novel together. It’s kind of like a “test case.” Kind of like a low pressure to try something out. It was a mini-comic called “Skim.” I believe it was the early summer of 2008 I did the first mini-comic for a literary magazine in Canada called “Kiss Machine.” So… this woman, Emily Pulari, commissioned these mini-comics from women who never really had a lot of experience with comics. The First Second booth at San Diego Comic-Con 2015

This one summer mariko