{"id":17535,"date":"2025-05-19T20:51:22","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T00:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17535"},"modified":"2025-05-19T20:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T00:51:24","slug":"episode-639-keiler-roberts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-639-keiler-roberts","title":{"rendered":"Episode 639 – Keiler Roberts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 639:
\nKeiler Roberts<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_639_-_Keiler_Roberts.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“My comics have never been about me in the way that memoirs or diary comics are about the person. They’re snapshots, things I want to remember. It’s a way of looking at life that isn’t about identity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>She may be able to quit cartooning (for a while), but Keiler Roberts<\/a> can’t quit The Virtual Memories Show<\/em>! With her wonderful new book, PREPARING TO BITE<\/a> (Drawn & Quarterly), Keiler returns to comics with a collection of (mostly) hilarious vignettes about domestic life, middle-age, the impact of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and having too many pets. We talk about why she walked away from comics and how she came back, how she avoids memoir in favor of memory (and humor), how she still has anxiety over drawing but is way<\/em> too tired to have social anxiety anymore, and why she branched into kitschy craft-modes that no one would mistake for art. We get into why she wants her kid to read her journals when she’s gone, how MS taught her how to be bored, how men have no idea what perimenopause is like, what it means to be the best appointment of her doctors’ day, and the reward of teaching comics to her friends and her mom. We also discuss how Karl Stevens<\/a> helped her back into comics with this book (& encourages her in every other artistic idea she has), how weird it is to see two of Karl’s super-detailed pages beside her sparse drawings in Preparing To Bite<\/em>, and why she loved collaborating with her brother on the grownup fairytale Creepy<\/a><\/em>. Plus, she teaches me the difference between living more and doing more, and I read you guys a Rilke poem in the intro. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read PREPARING TO BITE<\/a>!<\/p>\n

(And go listen to our 2017<\/a>, 2020<\/a>, and 2021<\/a> conversations!)<\/em><\/p>\n

“I just thought, ‘I don’t care how much I hate this process, how hard it is, I have to do something that feels like it’s mine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n