mariko tamaki laura dean keeps breaking up with me

Mariko Tamaki will be coming to the Vancouver Writers Fest to talk love, do improv, and offer insights on the graphic novel-writing process. It came out in May 2019, published by Groundwood Books of House of Anansi Press. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me recently won the 2019 Harvey Award for best young adult book. The balm it offers-one’s capacity to choose loving friendships in its wake-is a love story of its own. A gentle and tender take on toxic relationship dynamics within young queer love, this adolescent coming-of-age story meditates on the joys and struggles that still colour and complicate queer lives today.

The latest YA graphic novel from Tamaki-author of Skim and This One Summer-tells the story of Freddy’s on-again-off-again relationship with ever-popular Laura Dean. This wry quip on what it means to be queer fifty years after Stonewall hooked me instantly in Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me.

“I’m aware that I should be grateful that I have the ability to get broken up with and publicly humiliated the same as my hetero friends,” seventeen-year-old Freddy Riley writes to online advice columnist Anna Vice, “I am progress.” In the following interview, Jane Shi asks her about her influences, the importance of intergenerational conversations in the queer community, and tips she would give to new and likeminded creators.

Mariko tamaki laura dean keeps breaking up with me