Students came to the library to attend comics creators Kiara Brinkman and Sean Chiki’s author visit on Nov. 18. The couple’s first graphic novel together, “Lucy in the Sky,” made it onto the list of The Beat’s 24 Best Comics of 2021.
During the event, Brinkman and Chiki shared their backgrounds, their books, and how they make comics. They also played a trailer that they created for their new graphic novel, “Rhiannon,” and raffled off some copies of it.
When asked about her advice for young writers and illustrators, Brinkman said that she has had to “reinvent herself multiple times over the years” to get her writing out into the world; she started from journalism, went to short stories, then novels, and has finally come to graphic novels.
“Keep plugging away at it and find your way,” Brinkman said.
Chiki grew up in Pennsylvania and remembers looking forward to reading the huge comic section of the Pittsburgh Press every Sunday, he said. He loved comics such as “Batman” and “Tintin” when he was younger; this passion continues to this day, with some of his favorites as a high schooler being “Doctor Strange” and “Love and Rockets,” he said.
“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t obsessed with comics and drawing,” Chiki said.
Brinkman went to a public high school in the late 1990s and remembers the different groups of students there were, such as the popular athletes, the “cool outcast kids,” the “not-so-cool outcast kids,” the drama crew, and the yearbook and journalism crew, she said.
“I pretty quickly went into the journalism crew area, and sort of hung on there for dear life,” Brinkman said.
After high school, Brinkman planned to pursue journalism, but branched into creative writing during college, she said. While she was doing her masters in writing, she wrote her first novel, “Up High in the Trees,” which was picked up by a publishing company called Grove Atlantic, she said.
“It was well-reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post,” Brinkman said. “This was all like a very charmed experience. In 2008, … there was a big market crash, and the publishing industry was hit very hard. Even with a first book that had done fairly well, it became much harder to get this kind of literary fiction published.”
Around this time, Brinkman was teaching at local colleges and working part-time at a bookstore in San Francisco, where she met Chiki, she said.
“A few years later, we got married, and then we started making comics,” Brinkman said. “Given that I am a writer and Sean is an illustrator, we had conversations pretty early on about possibly collaborating in some way.”
Now, the couple makes graphic novels together. When people find this out, they often have a romantic impression of it, Brinkman said. In reality, she and Chiki are always working on borrowed time, especially since they have three young kids, she said.
“I get up at 3 in the morning,” Chiki said. “I work full-time as a middle school teacher, so I get in about two or three hours of drawing as soon as I get up. Then, I go, and I teach sixth grade.”
In order to get to where they are today, Brinkman and Chiki had to put in a lot of hard work and adapt to changes. Their stories can be inspiring examples of persistence to young writers and artists.
Brinkman and Chiki’s author event was organized for students who participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, which was hosted by the library, the Arras Periodical, One Long Story, and Youth Arts Movement. Although the official NaNoWriMo nonprofit organization shut down this year, MHS carries on its legacy, continuing to encourage students to turn their ideas into stories, whether they are writers, artists, or comic creators.
The goal of participating in the challenge is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, President of the Arras Periodical Crystal Huang said. Since the event is no longer official this year, the organizers modified it so that students work towards a personal goal that they set before the challenge began, she said.
“We emphasize that you could use the room for writing just about anything,” Huang said. “We’re just encouraging people to express (themselves) in different ways, like comics.”
Much of talent comes from building a skill through putting in time and effort, Chiki said when asked about his advice for students.
“It involves, as Malcolm Gladwell put it, putting the 10,000 hours into it,” Chiki added.
