Miriam Libicki is hoping to use her position as Vancouver Public Library’s new writer in residence to change how people think about graphic novels and comic books.
“I would like to raise awareness about graphic novels and how graphic novels can be any genre, any kind of story can be told in graphic novels and that even if you don’t draw it’s really not scary to learn how to cartoon,” she said. “That you don’t have to conform to a certain style of drawing in order to make a comic that can touch people.”
The Writer in Residence program has been around since 2005. Most recently, the library has decided to start looking for writers in specific genres, said Anne O’Shea, manager of programming and learning at the library, to ensure a wide breadth of types of writing are covered. Last year’s writer in residence was award-winning mystery novelist Sam Wiebe.
“We’re super excited to have a graphic novelist this year,” she said, adding that it’s a form of art and writing that both shows and tells a story.
Libicki was always interested in comic books and art but never saw herself drawing comics.
“I didn’t draw comics until university because I didn’t think I had the discipline to draw the same thing over and over,” she said. “So I always read comics but I thought I would be a children’s book illustration, or maybe just somebody who does art in their spare time.”
She drew her first comic while taking visual arts at Emily Carr University and used it as a way to capture and share a profound time in her life.
“I had just come back from a really intense experience. I had just come back from Israel, not only Israel but serving in the army, and I just kind of felt like I didn’t know how to talk about it and I almost felt like the whole experience was receding into a kind of dream.”
Libicki grew up in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home in Columbus, Ohio.
“My parents, for Modern Orthodox people, were pretty opened minded,” she said. “They encouraged us to read comic books and stuff but they were very Zionist. They really believed in the state of Israel as a homeland and both my older brother and older sister went to yeshiva — religious seminary — in Israel.”
Both finished high school early and completed at least a year of religious education in Israel.
“I was really into the idea of finishing high school early,” Libicki said. “I wasn’t so inclined to the seminary idea.”
So she did some research and found a gap year program for Israelis about to go into the army. The program allowed young people to delay army service for a year by doing community service in poor neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.
She was the first American to enter the program.
“So that was a very intense year because I was the only person who barely spoke Hebrew and they were all Israeli 18-year-olds who were about to join the army but they kind of saw it as their duty, they wanted to give back in another way and did this year of community service.”
Libicki was inspired and decided to become an Israeli citizen and join the army.
It didn’t exactly go as planned.
During her interview, Libicki said, the draft board seemed confused as to why she was there.
“They were like, ‘If you’re a girl, you don’t need to serve in the army. Why are you here?’”
Eventually she was accepted but sent for a psychological evaluation.
“I ended up with a mental health asterisk on my health profile, which, when I looked it up later, my mental affliction actually, technically was ‘introvert personality disorder.’ As in, I’m shy.”
The diagnosis, however, meant that she wouldn’t be given a skilled position — one that the army would invest money in training her for. Libicki had originally thought she could work in intelligence, or become a medic.
“Instead, even though I had been so gung ho about joining the army, I ended up as a secretary in an infirmary on a tank-training base in the middle of nowhere.”
She served for a year and nine months before leaving the country and, looking for a whole new experience, settled in Vancouver. A couple years later, in 2005, she was learning Adobe Illustrator at Emily Carr and decided to use the program to turn one of her army journal entries into a comic.
“That comic almost nobody has seen because it was very bad,” Libicki said. “It’s five pages and it’s quite clumsily done but it got a good response in the class.”
She said her classmates thought it was an interesting, different story and people wanted to see more.
Libicki kept going with it and her first comic, jobnik!, was born.
“The jobnik! series starts off where I am an unskilled secretary in an office that doesn’t need a secretary in the middle of the desert.”
She started going to comic book conventions. She would go to three or four a year and set deadlines for herself to complete the next issue in time for the next convention.
She said she’s completed half the jobnik! series, and about a third has been published. That’s been on the back burner since she returned to school to complete her master’s degree. She will graduate from UBC this fall and has plans to continue jobnik! in the future. She also teaches part time at Emily Carr.
As Vancouver Public Library’s writer in residence, Libicki will spend 40 per cent of her time conducting workshops, mentoring and supporting emerging writers and artists.
Libicki said she hopes to instill in people that it’s important to have a story and see it through.
“Really the best way to learn cartooning is to actually do it.”
Libicki started her residency Aug. 28 but will officially kick things off Sept. 14 with a special event at the central branch downtown.
“I’m going to talk a little bit about my path into comics, my career and show slides and do a bit of reading of comics, and we’ll have a collaborative pass around comic page that people will make together. And also because one of my themes is about identity, I have an exercise about self-portraits — self-portraits about how others see you and how you see yourself,” she said.
The event starts at 7 p.m.
For more information, visit vpl.ca/events.
