Firstly, what are you looking forward to most about presenting at NLS XI and what can attendees hope to hear in your address (without giving too much away, of course!)
I love libraries, information science, library workers and librarians, so I am very excited to be invited to present. I know that lots of workers in the ecosystem are very creative, so I am hoping that my keynote on “Visual Storytelling for Creativity, Connection and Community” will connect some lateral creative dots and spark ideas for the work they do. I also hope I’ll do a good job of advocating for the value of comics and zines generally, and specifically adult graphic novels as sophisticated form of literature and a valuable resource for diverse audiences, including neurodivergent readers (such as those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and aphantasia), adults with low literacy and people for whom English is a second language
As keynote speaker for NLS XI, you’ll be addressing a community of new and emerging library professionals. What role have libraries (or library staff) played in your own creative journey?
I have always enjoyed the different and diverse services, facilities and spaces that libraries offer. Aside from book related things, I also use room hire for performance rehearsals and workshops, sound recording booths, garden areas, meeting up for book clubs, using desk space and occasionally attending classes to learn new skills. Libraries are also very much a third space for me, and have been since I was a kid. I feel this is even more important these days with most spaces being highly individualised, privatised and pay to play. There are also times I have gone to the library feeling pretty bleak about the state of the world, and then just by interacting with a caring and helpful librarian, even just seeing a librarian doing their thing, I’ve had my sense of safety, hope and seeing the good in people reignited.
Your creative work spans graphic storytelling, writing, and other forms of visual communication, and your debut graphic novel Eventually Everything Connects also draws on a multitude of texts and references in its telling. What do you find multi-modal storytelling allows you to do—whether in structure or content—that you couldn’t achieve through one form alone?
I guess as a product of living in an increasingly entangled and complex world I find telling stories in layers and with multiple vantage points and modalities both interesting and useful. One way of doing this is with multi-vocal and intertextual storytelling, connecting different ideas, perspectives and ways of knowing and sense making. It's also me attempting to be more epistemologically honest? To acknowledge that while I am an embodied, subjective creature with a rich inner world, my thinking and experiencing is riffing off things, and it all happens in a relational and cultural context with other people, systems and ideas. It makes sense to me to have this approach when chewing on challenges and big questions. I also get mentally jazzed by cross-pollinating different disciplines and experiences.
As you know, the theme for NLS XI is ‘connection’ which is one of the many throughlines between your work and ours. Your title, Eventually Everything Connects, does suggest that connection is inevitable even if it takes time. Do you believe this, and how do you think we can truly achieve ‘connection’ with one another in a world frequently defined by disparity?
The title is a meta theme of the book, and a reference to the Charles Eames quote “Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” I take that to mean that nothing exists in isolation. Human relationships, creative concepts, and physical things all interact and influence one another over time. Connections emerge whether we notice them or not. To me connection and quality is not about the individual elements themselves, but the relationships between them. Like Artisotle said, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". I think about this a lot with how communities, projects, creative work, objects, cities and the success of things often depends on how the people, ideas, and tools are brought together.I chose this as the book title also to get the reader thinking laterally, about emergent properties and reading between the lines, so to speak. I mean it ecologically, philosophically, experimentally, scientifically, identity wise and in an imaginary sense. I also mean it quite literally, looking at history, globalisation, microplastics and the consequences of human actions at scale. We live in dynamic feedback loops. We can’t pretend any longer that things don’t have ripple effects, whether good, bad (and for whom) or unexpected consequences. Things are always in relationship at the micro and macro levels. So, yes I believe that eventually everything connects. Nothing is isolated.Do I think we can truly achieve connection with one another given the disparities of the world? That is a huge systemic, structural and philosophical question! What I think we can do is invite connection, be open to it and attempt to create the conditions for connection, attraction factors and incentives. I also think that support, solidarity and direct action can connect us, even from across the other side of the world in ways that are tangible, very beautiful, heart and principle led and that nurture allyship and community against neoliberal alienation.I think about the connection of how planting native flowering trees will attract native birds and bees. And how providing services, removing barriers and meeting the actual self-determined needs of a community at a place they actually want to come to will enable them to turn up. Sometimes what stands in the way of connection is unclear so there needs to be communication, respect, reciprocal feedback and a lot of iterative trial and error! But I also think that warmth, attention, safety, care, openness and humility goes a long way to building genuine connection and reciprocity. Things as simple as saying hello and offering someone a cup of tea and having a chat actually matter a lot.
You’ve spoken openly about neurodivergence and how it intersects with your life and work. How has this perspective influenced your creative process and the way you approach storytelling?
People often ask me why I make sequential visual narratives, such as comics and also graphic recordings. I don’t see words and pictures as such separate things. They are both representational. They activate different brain areas and are often separated into art and literature. But if you think back to learning to communicate as little person, typically drawing images come first then drawing words. And for a long time they coexist together. And there is a real pleasure in that combination. I like to draw words and write pictures. I’m a huge advocate of captions on films for this reason. I gravitate to the word and image combination because when they are in cahoots they do a third thing that images alone and text alone do differently. It becomes both a show and tell.As someone who is neurodivergent I find that spatial text with image anchors helps me read and images help me picture what is happening because with aphantasia (the inability to mentally visualise) I often need to see what is being talked about to “get it”. Similarly when I write I often need to “think on the page” to draw things out and see my thinking. The way I write and draw is also just naturally what comes out of me, and is the way I make sense of my experience and thinking.I have written about how I came to using words and pictures out of necessity, here: https://sarahthefirth.substack.com/p/drawing-my-wayAnd I need to draw things out because of aphantasia, here: https://sarahthefirth.substack.com/p/how-vivid-is-your-minds-eye
Are there any ‘touchstone’ texts that informed the creation of your graphic novel or that you return to for creative solace or inspiration in general?
I adore the comics education work of Lynda Barry and the way she encourages people to self-express and think on the page. Also Sam Wallman’s comics that chew on important topics and integrate words and images so impactfully inspire me. Eloise Grills "Big Beautiful Female Theory" made me feel like my hybrid autotheory work was possible, and could be hilarious, deranged and fun while making serious points. I could really go on because my book is influenced by so many fantastic books, I highly recommend people grab a copy of my book and flip to the bibliography to see what they are.
Finally, are you working on anything at the moment that you can tell us about?
I’m working on an “adult” NSFW comedy comic series called “The Adventures of Slut Hulk” about a fantasy entity called Slut Hulk who enters people to offer erotically corrective responses to everyday dilemmas. Think - dealing with a gendered road rage incident or being stuck between two man-spreaders on a long flight, or dealing with someone body shaming you. It is very silly, cathartic and fun and subverts all kinds of cultural and comic trope expectations of how we “should” behave and enact power.I’m also slowly chipping away on my next graphic novel “History Doesn’t Repeat, It Rhymes”.
The New Librarians' Symposium will take place on Saturday 6 September, 9:00am to 5:00pm AEST. Registrations are still open and will close on 4 September. We will be giving away two copies of Sarah's book Eventually Everything Connects at the Symposium - yet another reason to join us!