Lucy Knisley
Issue #39
The art student traveled to Paris, drew everything she ate, and landed a major book deal — all at age 23
By Celia C. Perez
Published: March 1st, 2009 | 3:37pm
One recent winter, art school student Lucy Knisley packed up her bags and spent six weeks living in Paris with her mom. During her time there, she documented the trip in an illustrated journal, which included sensory food drawings of cornichons and cheese, but also reflections on her anxieties surrounding adulthood and career. She called the work French Milk, after the rich, unprocessed dairy product she compulsively drank in Paris.
Upon her stateside return, Knisley self-published the book as a DIY venture, selling copies online and at comic book conventions. At the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival in New York, the book caught the eye of an editor at Simon & Schuster. Fast-forward one month later, and then-23-year-old Knisley had achieved every young illustrator’s dream: a book contract with a major publisher.
Knisley signed the contract as she prepared to graduate from The Art Institute of Chicago, a transitional period of her life. “I’d never done anything really professional,” she remembers, “and here I was having to figure out how to deal with the big publishing world. It was pretty scary. When they sent me the manuscript to be corrected the first time, every single page was filled with red marks, and it completely freaked me out.”
All second-guessing aside, French Milk is a loveable, charming read that’s at once personal diary and travel guide, pointing its readers to all the hidden treasures and gastronomical delights of Paris. Reminiscent of the work of Craig Thompson, Knisley’s illustrations are accompanied by photographs and gently humorous prose.
Now a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, Knisley is continuing a theme she started with her illustrations of meals in French Milk. Her master’s thesis is a food autobiography in the form of a graphic memoir. “I love to read about food, and I love to look at pictures of food,” Knisley says. “It’s a good progression from French Milk. I think it’s really strange that there isn’t more of it out there, people drawing what they’re eating.”
One of only a handful of women in the school’s small program, Knisley anticipates big changes in the world of comics. “People like Marjane Satrapi and Alison Bechdel have really opened the whole genre up for women artists to work,” she reflects. “Women spend so much time fighting for their place in the art world that to fight for this new place in the comic book/graphic novel world is like a whole new battle.”
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