Between You and Me

"Between You and Me: Transitional Comics is a collection of comics that reflects two transitions--from a person who doesn't draw to a cartoonist and from a butch lesbian to a transgender dude. I stopped drawing when I was a kid and didn't start drawing again until I was 33 years old and brave enough to take a course with Lynda Barry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the four years since, I have continued working closely with her, and in that time, I have quite literally drawn myself into being. It was through the experience of drawing myself in the world on the page that allowed me to draw myself out into the world, to realize that I am transgender and that I wanted to transition--something I had been thinking about for nearly a decade but kept private and suppressed. The comics in Between You and Me reflect the experiences of a transgender and transitioning person navigating the profundities and mundanities of daily life and observing the world around him. Also present in the book is my transition from non-drawer to someone who identifies as a cartoonist. Though not linearly, readers will note a shift in the confidence of the line as my fluency as an artist increased. The