Jason Walz
Jason Walz is the writer/illustrator of the acclaimed graphic novels The Flip Side, Last Pick, Last Pick: Born to Run, Last Pick: Rise Up, A Story for Desmond, and the Eisner-nominated Homesick. Jason's books are often shaped by over two decades teaching and a lifetime devoted to disability advocacy. |
Tell us about the featured book. What is it about, and why did you choose to write this story?
My latest book, THE FLIP SIDE, is certainly one of my most personal books to date. It's about a teen boy named Theo that loses his best friend to cancer. Unable to pull himself out of his sadness—a sadness that those around him don’t seem to respect or even notice, he soon finds himself in a world literally flipped upside down. Everyone has disappeared, except for a threatening, shape-shifting monster and a snarky teenage girl who already knows her way around this flipped world.
I lost my own best friend, Kris, to cancer a couple years before starting this book. In fact, Kris had written a short story called ROOTED about a world where gravity had reversed. After he died, that setting took on a whole new meaning to me, and THE FLIP SIDE felt like a story I needed to tell.
Besides being an author/illustrator, I am also a special education teacher. Our school was right in the middle of the protests and armed military response to the murder of George Floyd. Additionally, my students and I fumbled through the scary and confusing COVID days where we basically just comforted each other online. Some of my students lost people they loved during this time, and creating a story about loss for teens felt really important.
So with the loss of my friend, and loss hanging over all of us, I started writing and drawing a book that I felt portrayed sadness, anxiety, and depression in an honest way. But, you know, with monsters. So...fun?
Tell us a little about your writing process. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book? What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
I do very little research (is that bad?).
My graphic novel story ideas often start with something that I really want to say and that something is usually attached to an image (or multiple images) in my mind. Once that happens, I know that I'm onto something. From there I write from a place of as much honestly as possible. For me, the heart of the book is always more important than the realism of it. Some of my young adult books could be called science fiction, but the science parts of them are often really loose and probably wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny.
My primary research is a lot of photo taking for scene locations and a lot of google searches for spelling. Beyond that, I hope that the story carries the reader along enough so that they don't get tripped up on how a catalytic converter actually works.
Are there any writers or authors who have influenced your writing? If not, who are some of your favorite writers?
Comics in general have had a HUGE impact on me. I grew up a struggling reader and it wasn't until I discovered comic books that my reading improved and I learned to really love it. Beyond that, the amount of honesty, heart, and craft that Craig Thompson (BLANKETS, GINSENG ROOTS) puts into his books is always an inspiration to me. It's a reminder that stripping all irony from storytelling is a sure fire way to connect to readers in a way that can be meaningful and inspirational.
Has a library or librarian impacted your life or your writing life
If you have kids, and you live near a library, you probably know how important they are. Of course we want our small children to grow up to be intelligent, empathetic, and curious readers, but let's be honest, sometimes you just need to have a place where your kids can waddle around and be distracted by all the things a library can offer while you gather your energy up for the rest of the day. The Nokomis Library in south Minneapolis helped get our kids and us through those amazing and difficult years as they grew up. Now my two boys have towers of library books around their beds at all times like messy literary cocoons.
When you’re not writing, what do you like to do in your spare time?
I love drawing much more than I love writing, so I'm doing that as much as possible. Besides that, I'm trying to get my kids to watch old movies I love and sometimes they begrudgingly pretend to like them.
Favorite place to go to in Minnesota?
I'm one of those pathetic Minnesotans that actually dreads and despises winter. But...my persistent (and often correct) wife has our whole family go to the northern tip of MN for a winter camp at Camp Menogyn where we snowshoe, ski, dogsled, and cold plunge. I don't really look forward to it ever, but once we're there, I love it. With no choice but to engage with sub zero temps, I'm often surprised how beautiful and reinvigorating it all is. Growing up as a real indoor kid that made comics, it always stretches me past my comfort zone, and that's often a really good thing.