We chat with author Emma Hunsinger about How It All Ends, which is a funny, vulnerable, and disarming debut graphic novel about being overwhelmed by who you are and who you might be—and all the possibilities in between.
Hi, Emma! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Sure! Seeing as this is the Nerd Daily, I can tell you some nerdy stuff; I am currently obsession with the 1999 real time strategy game Age of Empires 2; I play it alot AND watch a lot of videos of people playing it. To make this book (How It All Ends) I used a super high-maintenance technical pens called Rapidographs; they are often getting clogged and cleaning them is one of my favorite ways to spend time.
When did you first discover your love for writing and illustrating?
I started with the shortest cartooning form; the signal panel gag. I LOVED New Yorker cartoons when I was a kid and would often make my own. From there, I moved onto four panel strips around 4th grade (I had a Garfield “fat cat three pack” in my locker at all times), and eventually the comics got longer and longer ‘til this 297 page beaut.
Your debut graphic novel, How It All Ends, is out August 6th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
- Rowdy
- Genuine
- Cartoony
- Sunny
- Irreverent
What can readers expect?
Readers should expect a unique looking book! I drew How It All Ends without panels because the way I draw really shines when scenes are not in boxes. I want my readers to be able to read the drawings as much as they read the text, and giving characters space to ‘act’ is a huge part of that.
Where did the inspiration for How It All Ends come from?
The inspiration for this book came from a piece I published in the New yorker called “How To Draw A Horse” one of the last panels in the comic is the main character (me) lying on a couch imagining saving her crush from a fire. I used this as a jumping off point to tell a story about how we use our imaginations before and after we enter adolescence. How we go from using imagination for play to using it for imagining social scenarios.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I really did love writing and drawing scenes that take place in the main character’s imagination. It was fun because occasionally the scenes were absurd, and I got to draw things like baby wizards, owl monsters, and ducks with arms. But It was also great to draw scenes where the main character is catastrophizing about embarrassing herself in font of her crush because capturing what those thoughts are like felt like drawing truth.
Can you tell us a bit about your process when it came to the illustrations for How It All Ends?
As I mentioned, I wanted to make sure every page felt like it has movement on it, so I did a lot of drafting and redrafting character’s poses to make sure they really felt alive. The hardest thing to draw was any scene that included more than one desk which in a school story…is pretty often. I inked the drawings traditionally with Rapidograph pens, and my wife ended up coloring the book on Procreate!
This is your debut published graphic novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
I always loved drawing, and make little cartoons for my friends and coworkers. Eventually, enough people encouraged me to start submitting gags to the New Yorker. The magazine ended up buying some and I decided to see where cartoons could take me. I enrolled in the Center for Cartoon Studies program and while there, for homework I wrote How To Draw A Horse. My teachers and classmates encouraged me to try and get the piece published, and so I sent it to the New Yorker. They published it and the piece ended up going viral. From there, I got an agent, pitched a book…and here we are!
What’s next for you?
I’m excited to be working on a second book with Greenwillow! After that, I am looking forward to collaborating with my wife, Tillie Walden, again.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I LOVED Vera Brosgol’s new book “Plain Jane and the Mermaid.” I got that hard to describe ‘book feeling’ where you get so into a story it changes the atmosphere around it. And I’m excited to read Jen Wang’s new book “Ash’s Cabin!” The dance scenes in her previous book “Stargazing” were very inspiring to me.
