Graphic Novelists at TCAF: Zoe Maeve

All Lit Up: Can you tell us a little about your recent book?Zoe Maeve: My book The Gift is a YA historical fantasy/horror novel about Anastasia, the last princess of Imperial Russia. On her fifteenth birthday, she wakes up to find a present waiting for her in her room, a camera. At first she assumes it’s from her family, but they don’t know who sent it either. With the arrival of the camera she begins to dream of a vast field she has never been to, and a fur coat clad creature who inhabits it. She starts carrying the camera everywhere, and using it to document her family’s life confined to the palace as the revolution simmers outside. The book was inspired by the many historical photographs of the Romanov family. It’s YA but to be honest I wasn’t really thinking about the audience age-wise when I wrote it, so I think (or hope) it’ll be enjoyable to both young adult and older readers. 

Click here to find The Gift at the Conundrum Press booth at TCAF. 

ALU: What do you love most about the graphic novel as a form?ZM: Definitely its complexity, the possibility of having so many strands going at once, combined with its formal limitations. By limitations I just mean the convention of panels, the finite amount of space to convey information, mood, etc in. People often say that comics are more accessible than purely written works and I don’t really see it that way. Paradoxically, I often put off reading comics because I feel they take more energy to read. For me making a comic feels like doing a puzzle of some kind, although maybe that’s how everyone feels about the medium they work in.  ALU: How do you approach a project? What is your process?ZM: I always start with a lot of research, even when I’m working on something that doesn’t necessarily need it. Through the research scenes take shape and eventually string themselves together into a story. When I draw, I work traditionally and I use a combination of a lightbox, tracing paper and a bit of gridding to transfer drawings from my sketchbook, play with scale, angle etc. Lately, I’ve been teaching myself more formally about writing, since like many comics artists I came to it haphazardly. I’m learning more about plot construction and character so that I have more control of my work when I get stuck instead of like, looking at photographs of faberge eggs for three hours until a good idea comes to me. ALU: Who are some of your influences? What inspires your work?ZM: When I was a kid we had some really big books of Little Nemo and Krazy Kat around the house. I found them incredibly compelling to look at and they had a big influence in my work, although any recommendation of Nemo comes with the warning that it’s from the early 20th century and contains some racist imagery. Both of them take place in these worlds that are fantastical but weirdly hostile and lonely feeling. Some of my favourite panels are the ones with lots of space, like Krazy Kat under the big, dark, desert sky. Recently I read Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and that’s been percolating in my head. I love to read a long book, where you can get really lost in the middle and I’d love to be able to do that in my medium. ALU: Did you learn anything unexpected when working on your recent book?ZM: I think I learned about how to make something that is truthful but not necessarily accurate. When I started the project I got obsessed by these online forums of Romanov hobbyists who were collecting every detail they could about the family’s lives. As a research tool, it was completely invaluable and I’m so grateful for those people. As the project went on, I let go of a lot of historical accuracy. The timeline is wrong, the ages of the characters aren’t quite right. I mashed together two different palaces, because I liked parts of both of them. But I think I learned a bit of how to make reading the comic evoke the same feeling I got from looking at the historical photographs, even as I was able to stretch the world to the needs of the story. I have always been worried about the truthfulness of what I make, citing my sources, all that, so learning this was very liberating.   

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Zoe Maeve is a comics artist originally from Tkaronto/Toronto who is now based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She studied visual arts at Concordia University, where she worked in oil painting, printmaking, and textiles before finding comics. Her work is based in her love of research and she is interested in hauntings, archives, ecologies and other realities. In 2016 her book July Underwater was the recipient of Best English Comic at the Expozine Awards. She currently shares her home with one feisty black cat.

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Click here to find The Gift at the Conundrum Press booth at TCAF.