Chapter 1: What historical achievement did Lee Lai accomplish with her graphic novel?
Hi, I'm Clare Nicholls with a special episode of The Book Show where congratulations are in order for Leigh Lye, who has made history by winning this year's Stella Prize. The Stella is an Australian prize for women and non-binary writers, and Lee has won for her book Canon. It's the first ever graphic novel to win the $60,000 prize. Lee, congratulations.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
How do you feel?
Oh, God. I mean, look, I chose comics because I like sitting in a quiet room and drawing. And so the part where you fly around and you meet a lot of people, it's thrilling and it's also quite nerve wracking for me. So I feel quite nervous, but also very pleased.
And I've heard you say before that you don't always love your work. In fact, you don't even always like your work. You've actually made a comic about this feeling. You've done your research.
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Chapter 2: How did Lee Lai feel about winning the Stella Prize?
What was your feeling about Canon when you made it?
It's a kind of a funny little strange story about difficult friendships and like the other things I write, it's somewhat unresolved and so I did not think ā it would do very well. I really thought that in the way that in the world platonic relationships are undervalued, I think I assumed that because it is fixating on a platonic friendship that maybe it would not be interesting to readers.
I've heard you say that Canon is a book about a second coming of age. What do you mean by a second coming of age?
Well,
I mean, I don't know if we ever stop coming of age. I've been talking to my parents who are both in their early 70s, and they just seem to both be feeling like they're just being, you know, having the pie of life continuously thrown in their faces. They're constantly learning things about themselves and about the world that is shocking and surprising to them.
And so I think if you're just generally paying attention and inclined to question things, it never stops happening. But the second part for me, comes from this idea that the first coming of age is in your adolescence and then you hit adulthood and then you're just doing adulthood. And that is not at all the experience that I've had of adulthood.
And so in that sense, it is the next step of adulting where you're letting go of this idea of your youth and looking ahead with the kind of confusion of what actually is adulting.
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Chapter 3: What themes are explored in Lee Lai's graphic novel 'Cannon'?
If I'm no longer young, what is being an adult and what parts of my youth can I still hold on to and what parts do I have to let go of?
I'm guessing for a character like Cannon and maybe also someone like you, Lee, this idea of a second coming of age is complicated by the fact of being queer, right? Because the first coming of age was so much probably wrapped up in identity.
Absolutely, which for me was in my teenage life. Like I came out as queer when I was a teenager and then came out as trans when I was like a later teenager or in early adulthood. And I really thought at that point in my life that if I could just figure out that stuff and then do it, you know, like transition and come out as queer and like live that life, then I would have figured it out.
And that is so not how it's gone. And I think that is a lot of my friends' experiences as well. And I'm very touched when I write about hyper-specific things like queer experience. And then some straight man in his 50s tells me that he's read the book and shares all of these details about the stories that I've written. that he resonated with.
Like that is just the, that is the stuff of why we write, you know, like that is just a thrill to me.
I think so many people will identify with Cannon. She's a line cook in Montreal. She is having this kind of second coming of age. Her nickname is Cannon, which suggests she's a loose cannon. She's wild, but she's anything but. Tell me about this person.
She is a very service-oriented, very quiet person who really values showing up for her loved ones and a sense of duty in her relationships. And one of the restrictions that I like to put on myself as a writer of comics is that I only write in dialogue. I don't use narrative prose anywhere in the comic. And that's something I really enjoy. I love dialogue.
I love writing in dialogue and I love conversations. But when you're doing a psychological portrait of someone who is quite stoic and it's meant to be about their internal world, I think halfway through the book, I really started to reckon with the challenge of that restriction in relation to creating this character.
And so it put a lot more emphasis or pressure maybe on the little tiny expressions in her face or the little shifts in her body language to kind of show and illustrate the slow breakdown of her peaceability, I guess.
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Chapter 4: What does Lee Lai mean by a 'second coming of age' in her work?
Trish constantly interrupts Cannon, takes up all the airspace. What's happening in the relationship between Trish and Cannon?
Yeah.
I mean I wanted to depict a relationship between two friends who found each other you know in a point where they're figuring out their identities which you know in this situation was about 15 years prior
and then illustrator friendship which is no longer bound by those identities like maybe there is no longer a sense of scarcity in that or it's no longer something that they're both thinking about in that way um it's just you know the day-to-day dirt of life and doing life together and yeah they really are a study in opposites trish is very outward and canon is very inward and trish is quite entitled um and canon is quite self-effacing and
I wanted to show the ways in which those opposites can grate against one another, but also the ways in which they enable some beautiful things in each other. I think Trish is in many ways the antagonist, but she also, I think, pushes Canon in ways that Canon needs to be pushed.
Leelai, this is a beautiful looking graphic novel, all in black and white. Can you tell us what your tools of the trade are?
Thank you. My tools are pencil and kneadable erasers and Bristol board. I work on 9x12, which I'm very ashamed to say 9x12 because that means inches. And it's a hint that I live in North America now with the horrible imperial system. And I use brush and ink. So I use just like a sable hair paintbrush to do all of my lines with.
And I've used those tools for about 10 years because I'm a creature of habit.
And what is the process? Is it pictures first, words first, or a bit of both?
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Chapter 5: How do the characters Cannon and Trish represent different aspects of friendship?
I'd love you to make the case for why we should all read more graphic novels. I think like a lot of
Underground media, whether that be radio, podcasts, alternative film, graphic novels have existed mostly within a niche subculture for a long time. And because of that, they are just exquisitely strange most of the time. They do things that I think a lot of mainstream fiction prose just doesn't do. And
You know, I've met because of the lucky moments when I have gotten to get a readership outside of just the subculture of comics. I've met a lot of people who haven't read graphic novels before, and they often tell me, oh, I'm really nervous to read a graphic novel. And, you know, it's still a book. I like to remind them, you know, it's up to down when the left or right.
And there is, ideally, if the storyteller is doing their job right, there is a lot of intuitive reading in it. I think a lot of the emotionality is just, is clear through the pictures and through the words. I think, you know, fiction has offered so much to graphic novels in terms of how we learn how to do our craft.
And I think a lot more fiction readers and writers would benefit from looking at graphic novels to think of alternative ways of thinking about, you know, the emotionality of the story or the pacing of the story or just the strangeness of the story.
And they can start with your book.
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Chapter 6: What tools does Lee Lai use to create her graphic novels?
It's called Canon. Congratulations, Leelai.
Thanks so much, Claire.
That's Leigh Lye, the winner of this year's Stella Prize for her graphic novel, Canon. And thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the book show.
Chapter 7: Why should readers consider exploring graphic novels like 'Cannon'?
It was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Whadjuk Noongar people. I'm Claire Nicholls, and for more of my author chats, make sure you're following the book show on ABC Listen.