by Katelynn Schoop

As the graphic novel moves toward the mainstream, it similarly becomes an accessible method of articulating and making public issues that require a voice. 

With the publication of Fear of Fighting, novelist and publisher of Shameless magazine Stacey May Fowles addresses the often-silenced world of mental illness, and the sense of alienation and loneliness that accompanies it. 

In bringing together Fowles’ prose with the illustrations of Marlena Zuber the graphic novel, published by Invisible Publishing, emerges as a new kind of urban story – describing a life that may actually be lived by many.

[October 2008]

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Stacey May Fowles: It was a complete fluke, actually. Invisible Publishing had expressed some interest in doing a book with me after I'd been a contributor to one of their early anthologies, and I had set up a meeting with their publisher Robbie MacGregor to discuss doing a short story collection or my second novel with them. On the way to the meeting, I picked up some drawings that Marlena Zuber had biked over to my apartment building. She and I had been working on a collaborative piece for an anthology, and I just happened to bring some of the resulting drawings to the meeting with Robbie. There I was pitching him hundreds of manuscript pages over perogies, and he fell in love with a few drawings I'd brought along by accident. It was pretty amazing how much faith he had in us right from the beginning. He made a huge, enthusiastic commitment to the project after seeing only a few pages of the work we had done together, a collaboration that was still really fresh at the time. I walked out of that meeting, called Marlena on my cell phone while I was still on the street and said "hey, you wanna do a book with me?" and she said yes right away.

KS: Was the writing process radically different from writing a novel?

SMF: The major difference for me was that I wasn't submitting a finished manuscript hoping it would be accepted, I was creating something with another person with an end in sight. That experience can be simultaneously exciting and terrifying. You've got the confidence of publication and someone's faith in you on your side, along with all the benefits of a creative partner to support and buoy you, but the pressure of a deadline can be overwhelming. I'll admit that there were days when the pressure was crippling and nothing would come. Having said that, working with a partner on something both visual and literary really refreshes your creativity and revives your interest in the craft. If anything it was much more fun to send Marlena a batch of copy and see what she did with it creatively, rather than sitting day in and day out in a lonely room working away in a vacuum. Her visual reactions to my prose were always an inspiring way to propel me to keep working.

KS: How did you end up collaborating with Marlena Zuber, and what was it like to work on a book with multiple people (be honest)?

SMF: Back in the days when I had a day job, Marlena and I shared desk space at Creative Works Studio, an art and vocational studio for people with long term mental health issues run by St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. I was the administrative assistant and she was a vocational arts councillor, and we always talked about working collaboratively (and in some ways we already were). The graphic poem we did for Boredom Fighters! (Tightrope Books) was the first piece we worked on together, and we both really enjoyed the process, so doing a book length work seemed a natural progression. We worked together well as colleagues, became friends, and the creative collaboration (which came a few years later) always seemed like the bonus super fun part of our relationship. Because we worked in the field of mental health together, and because the program we worked on was focused on community, both of those themes seemed a natural fit in our work.

You would assume that working with multiple people would be much more difficult, but with Marlena the process of creating a book was so much easier. She's one of the most supportive, committed and genuine people I've ever met, and she was ridiculously respectful of my writing even when it meant illustrating it was difficult. When I would offer to change certain passages to facilitate her role she'd always respond with a flat out no. It's a truly amazing experience for a writer to work with an illustrator and I'd certainly recommend it. Marlena made me see things in my writing that I didn't even know were there, and she turned the world of Fear of Fighting into something surreal, imaginative and beautiful.

That and she invites me over for margaritas and gives the best Christmas and birthday gifts.

SMF: I'm on the edge of thirty now, so maybe I won't be able to articulate the alienated twenty-something experience properly for that much longer, if I ever did all - maybe my next book will be about married home-owners who enjoy gardening and take daily vitamins.

I've said in the past that I feel like there's a tendency in mainstream literature (and pop culture in general) to parody young women, their lives, and their sexuality, turning them into boy crazy, shoe-obsessed, martini-gulping cartoons. Thankfully, I think more and more we're seeing younger female writers who are working from their experience, writing truly honest, relevant narratives that are not limiting and that are gaining more attention and respect in the media. In Fear of Fighting I wanted to look at how urban alienation and loneliness can translate into mental health issues, specifically anxiety disorder, a condition that's common in the city amongst people in their mid to late twenties but rarely discussed or treated. I feel like Marlena really understood this need to get these ideas out there, and that her illustrations really articulate the condition in a way where words would fail. I don't think the compulsion to write about these issues is a new one, but I think that it wouldn't be wrong to say that popular Canadian literature doesn't make a lot of room for young, urban women's stories. I feel like the more we write and support them, the more people will pay attention.