{"id":18348,"date":"2026-09-19T15:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T19:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=18348"},"modified":"2026-09-19T15:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T19:46:13","slug":"episode-691-emil-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-691-emil-wilson","title":{"rendered":"Episode 691 – Emil Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 691:
\nEmil Wilson<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_691_-_Emil_Wilson.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

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

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

“With comics, I think I was looking for an art form that I could devote the most amount of creative skills to, and graphic novels let me do art, let me write, let me do graphic design: different types of skills.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his fantastic debut graphic novel, THE NIGHTINGALES<\/a> (Avid Reader Press), Emil Wilson<\/a> tells a heartbreaking and beautiful coming-of-age story of the AIDS era. We talk about his father’s decision in 1985 to bring a work-friend with AIDS into their home (in a small town in Oregon), how he fictionalized his family and the story well enough to make the fiction true, how he figured out the amazing sketchbook style of the book, and how he only came to comics in his 50s, following a 25-year career as an at director an ad agency. We get into his experiences at The Center for Cartoon Studies<\/a>, where he was older than most every other student, the Nora Krug<\/a> book that was his gateway drug into comics, my advice when he began this project, his work as an AIDS buddy for Gay Men’s Health Crisis in the ’80s and how younger people he meets have no knowledge of the AIDS era, how making The Nightingales<\/em> changed his understanding of his family, and how it felt to make a “user’s manual” for his father. We also get into the contrast between advertising and comics, how making comics can feel a bit like making films or videos, how the language to describe comics may need to evolve just as the language for gay life had to, why this book isn’t a memoir but is<\/em> full of faces, how kindness can be complicated, and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read The Nightingales<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“There was this feeling in the small town I grew up in, that AIDS is something happened in New York or San Francisco, but it didn’t happen here.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n