An Interview with Jennifer Hayden

"The more I draw, the more accurately I can document what’s in my head. But the desire to combine beauty, energy, movement, and humor is the same as it’s always been."

When I (Nora) was creating a new class on the visual culture of comics a few years back, I was looking to include creators I wasn’t as familiar with. As I went through the shelves of a local bookstore, I saw a title that grabbed my attention: The Story of My Tits, by Jennifer Hayden. The graphic memoir about breast cancer and so much more, immediately pulled me in, with her expressive black and white drawings and obvious humor. My students liked it, too, getting into heavy discussion about women’s roles in the world, and their own ambitions for life. Hayden’s work is both easy to slip into and layered with complex emotion and meaning—we highly recommend you get her books if you haven’t already. For now, we hope you enjoy our interview with Hayden, here:

Describe your comics journey--how did you get into making comics?

As a kid in the seventies, I read the Archies obsessively, as well as Peanuts, Doonesbury and Asterix & Obelix.  Then I lost track of comix until I was recovering from a mastectomy in 2004.  I read in the New York Times (always the last to spot a trend in the arts, but I owe them this one) about these things called graphic novels.  I bought a stack of all the best titles by women.  I decided this was how I wanted to share the experience of my breast cancer with other women going through it.  I was by then a failed fiction writer and a failed children’s book illustrator.  But I was a bitchin’ storyteller!  And I had a story to tell.  This, I realized was my medium.  My drawings prompted my words and my words prompted my drawings.  A year later I started The Story of My Tits.

How did you develop your voice/unique comics style?  As an autobiographical creator, how do you decide what to write about?

My comics style is no different than my drawing style always was.  The more I draw, the more accurately I can document what’s in my head.  But the desire to combine beauty, energy, movement, and humor is the same as it’s always been.  The format for my comix I straight up stole from Lynda Barry, and when I met her and told her, she said, “I’m so glad I was able to help!  This stuff isn’t copyrighted!!”  And gave me a bear hug.  She’s got the most enormous heart.

As for deciding what to write about, it’s whatever great story has reared its ugly head.  Autobio comix share a lot with poetry and standup.  It’s their bastard child.  Sorta.  Mine  are, anyway.  But in order to feel free with a story, it has to be mine.  Not somebody else’s.  I’ve learned to be more and more careful with that.

What are the joys and challenges of working in comics?

That’ll take us all night!  The joys include participating in a community that is wildly alive and welcoming to all stripes, where you can still meet the publishers and editors and the readers, and the full scope of the art form is still being discovered.  The challenge is coping with the crushing repetition and self-discipline required to make box after box, page after page, day after day.  It can lead to isolation, anxiety, depression, and lots of body issues if you don’t take care.  I have advanced scoliosis and take very precise care of my body in order to stay in this game.

Are you working on something now? Anything you want readers to know about?

I’m ten pages from finishing my first book in color for Top Shelf, a graphic anti-cookbook called Where There’s Smoke There’s Dinner.  What started as a collection of disastrous kitchen anecdotes—I really, really hate to cook and have done far too much of it for anyone’s good—became, since I’m an autobiographer, a look into what lies at the root of these tales, the reason for my suffering.  And hooee did I dig up some psychotic crap.  The art is made to look like a real cookbook, and that’s been fun.  During quarantine, I played hooky from this book for three years and made another graphic novel about my unrequited, somewhat abusive love affair with France.

I’ll be editing that after I hand this one in.  Last fall I also self-published a collection of short comix called The Sweetness That Remains.  I’ll be ready to hit your bookshelves again soon, I swear.

Check out Jennifer’s latest news and other work at her website and her Substack!