Emil Wilson is the author and illustrator of the new graphic novel The Nightingales. He is also an art director and cartoonist, and he lives in San Francisco.
Q: How much did your family’s experiences inspire The Nightingales?
A: It inspired the central premise of the book. I wanted to create a graphic novel about my family. I was in my mid-50s, my father was dying, and I found myself reflecting on the relationships and experiences that shaped us. The story grew from a part of our family's history that we rarely talked about—which is often where the best stories begin.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title comes from a small moment in the book when one of the characters compares himself to a nightingale. The nightingale has inspired poems, fables, and operas for centuries, yet it's a plain brown bird that often goes unnoticed.
I love the idea that someone who appears ordinary can possess extraordinary gifts. In many ways, that describes every major character in this book.
One of my favorite facts is that the famous nightingale song is sung exclusively by the male birds. Most people assume it's the female because we tend to associate beauty with her, but in the world of nightingales, it's the males who possess that remarkable voice.
Q: Did you work on the text and the illustrations simultaneously, or did you focus on one before turning to the other?
A: Most cartoonists write the script first and then draw. That makes perfect sense because drawing is so time-consuming. I don't work that way because I'm constantly revising. For me, the words and pictures are always in conversation with one another.
That's one reason I chose to tell the story through the pages of a sketchbook. Not only does it reflect the way memory looks and feels to me—fragmentary, expressive, and a little chaotic—but it also gives me the freedom to revise both the writing and the artwork without sending shockwaves through the rest of the book.
I wish I were a creator who could finalize the words before I started drawing. But the more I draw a character, the more questions I ask: What is this person feeling? What does she want? What does her facial expression look like when she's uncomfortable?
As my understanding deepens, both the writing and the artwork evolve together. I keep revising until the last minute. It probably drives my editors—and especially my production team—a little crazy.
Q: The author Will Schwalbe said of the book, “Emil Wilson manages to convey the quirky joys as well as the horrors of the 1980s—highlighting the relentless nightmare of the early days of AIDS—while also speaking to issues that couldn’t be more current.” What do you think of that description?
A: I was especially touched by Will Schwalbe's words. He was a young gay man in New York City during the AIDS crisis, while I grew up in a small town in Oregon, so he witnessed firsthand the darkest days of the early epidemic. I'm a few years younger, and I believe those few years probably spared me from the period when so many young gay men were getting sick and dying.
After I moved to New York, I volunteered with Gay Men's Health Crisis as a buddy for people living with AIDS. I saw how profoundly the disease affected individuals, families, and entire communities.
As was the case in 1985, we find ourselves in a moment that feels deeply divided, where people are often misunderstood and basic human decency seems in short supply.
At its heart, The Nightingales is a story about choosing compassion over fear. Sometimes the person most changed by an act of kindness isn't only the one who receives it, but the one who offers it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm working on another semi-autobiographical novel, though this one is much closer to memoir. It's about the relationship between siblings, one of whom is me.
The biggest difference from The Nightingales is that this time I'm writing about experiences in which I wasn't just present—I was one of the people driving the story. Although I make a brief appearance in The Nightingales, I'm the central character in this new book.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: As a reader, I'm always looking for books that surprise me. I love discovering stories that feel unexpected, nuanced, and singular, regardless of genre.
I didn't discover graphic novels until I was in my 50s. Before then, I assumed comics were meant for younger readers. Then I realized they could tell deeply human stories about adults with as much emotional depth as any novel.
That's the kind of book I wanted to make. The Nightingales is about a family trying to understand one another and find their place in the world. If it inspires someone to pick up a graphic novel they otherwise might have overlooked, I'd be thrilled.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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