Photo by Marion Vitus

Raina Telgemeier grew up in San Francisco, but made her way to New York City when she was 22 to attend the School of Visual Arts as an Illustration and Cartooning student. She received her BFA in 2002, and has worked as a freelance artist ever since. She is the adapter and illustrator of four Baby-sitters Club graphic novels, the co-author of X-Men: Misfits, and the author-illustrator of the bestselling dental memoir graphic novel Smile, which recently won the Eisner Award for Best Publication for a Teen Audience. Smile was also an ALA Notable Book, a Kirkus Best Book of 2010, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Honor title.

Raina lives in Queens, NY, with her cartoonist husband, Dave Roman.

How do you say your name?

You can listen to me say my name here.

When did you start reading comics? Did you always want to make them?

I started reading the funnies in my local newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, when I was nine. My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes and For Better or For Worse. I started making my own comic strips around the same time, and realized I liked putting pictures and words together to tell stories.

How’d you get a job drawing Baby-sitters Club comics for Scholastic? Was it your idea?

Kind of. I met the editors at Scholastic when they were starting up the Graphix imprint, and they were looking for new artists to do projects. I brought a few original ideas to them, but nothing that was really ‘ready to go.’ So they asked what I read when I was young, and when I said I’d been a BSC fan, their eyes lit up and they said, "THAT might make a good graphic novel! Want to do some sketches?" And that was that.

What about SMILE - did you really knock your two front teeth out? Is this a true story?

Yes! It’s all true. I was in sixth grade when I fell and knocked out my teeth, and I have been dealing with the consequences ever since. I had braces, a lot of surgery, and a lot of awkward smiles as a result. The comic SMILE was born out of a need to get the whole experience down on paper, since I spent so much time telling people about it.

How about the other stuff? The earthquake, the incident with your skirt in high school...

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Earthquakes happen pretty frequently in San Francisco, and I happened to live there during the last big one, in October of 1989. As for my friends doing mean things to me...let's just say, I'm not friends with those people anymore. One incident involving my skirt was enough!

Can I see some pictures of you when you were a kid?

I've got a few photos posted over here.

Can you give me some advice on a personal issue?

No, I'm really not in a position to do that. If you're being bullied by kids at school, or you're worried about a friend's behavior, or something is really bothering you...it's best to talk to an adult you know and trust.

I'm getting braces soon. Can you tell me what it's like?

I tried to convey what braces were like, for me, as accurately as possible in Smile. This is how I remember it. Chances are, your experience won't be so bad, unless you also knocked out your two front teeth and need to get your whole mouth reconstructed!

Would you be willing to read my story/comic/essay/novel?

I'm sorry, but no. I've only got so many hours in a day, and I devote most of them to working on my own books and projects. You can join a writers' community online, or at your school or library, though!

When will X-Men: Misfits 2 be out?

Sadly, it won't. The publisher decided not to release the second volume. It wasn't just my book--quite a few other titles got canceled, too. I'm sad about it! Volume 2 was going to pay a lot of story points off. And Rogue and Jubilee were going to join the cast...Maybe someday it will be published, but since I don't own the characters or the story, there's not much I can do about it.

What do you use to make your comics?

I sketch out all my pages on plain 8.5 x 11 paper, and then create a full-sized version of those sketches on Bristol board, using a Col-erase light blue colored pencil. Over that, I pencil each panel pretty tightly with an F graphite pencil. Panel borders (and sometimes lettering, if I’m doing it by hand) are inked with a Faber Castell F pen. Finally, I ink over the penciled drawings with Dr. Martin’s waterproof India ink and a no. 2 Windsor & Newton sable brush, and erase the pencil lines with a Staedtler Mars plastic eraser.

Black and white art is scanned into the computer at 1200 dpi, and I make corrections and adjustments in Photoshop. If the comic is being lettered digitally (in the case of the BSC comics), the files are sent to the letterer, who uses a font based on my handwriting to put in the text. He creates the word balloons, too. If my comics are going to be in color (in the case of SMILE), they are colored entirely in Photoshop. I work on an iMac, with a Wacom tablet. I used to dislike working digitally, but I enjoy it more and more, the more I do it.

Are you still making mini-comics? Where can I buy them?

I still draw short story comics, but I don't really have the time to make mini-comics anymore. My old mini-comic series, Take-Out, will hopefully be collected into a book someday! Most of the short comics I make now are posted right here on my website, and are free to read.

What's your next book about?

My next graphic novel is called DRAMA. It's about a group of kids on their school's stage crew, and their adventures in putting on a school play. I'm drawing it right now, and it will be out in September, 2012.

Will you write a sequel to Smile? Please?

Well...Smile ends where the story of my teeth ends. There's not much more to tell about my dental history! I do have other stories I want to tell about my life, so it's very possible that in the future I'll work on another book about my family and friends and experiences.

Will you be drawing more Baby-sitters Club comics?

There are no plans for more BSC graphic novels, at the moment.

Didn’t you get engaged in an interesting way? I think I read about it on the internet or something.

Yeah, Dave came up with a really amazing way to ask me to marry him. He drew this comic, and gave it to me while we were on a plane. Later, I drew the rest of the comic, and we put it online. A lot of people were able to read it that way, including many, many people we had never met, but who were excited for us anyway!

Are you interested in collaborating on graphic novels in the future?

Maybe. Serious queries should go through my agent, Judy Hansen.

Will you come speak at my school/library/conference/convention/company picnic?

Sure! Please see my Author Visits Page for more information.