By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
Paige Hender knows exactly who she was as a child, and who she is as an adult.
And Hender is not about to apologize.
“I’ve always been what the kids call a Geek. I had a really hard time connecting with people. I was more bookish. I read novel novels, and I read graphic novels. I always knew I wanted to be in the arts, but that would flip-flop a lot from year-to-year, whether I wanted to be an illustrator, or an animator, or a cartoonist, or a tattoo artist.”
At 27, Hender – who was born in Ottawa, Canada, and moved to Shreveport when she was a year old – is an illustrator, cartoonist, and author. March 19th, Hender’s first book – The Confessional – was published. It’s an adult graphic novel set in 1920’s New Orleans.
“I get nauseous sometimes,” Hender said, thinking about her work being available for everyone to buy and read. I get really nervous. Ther are no guarantees people are going to even like it. I’ve gotten a couple of good reviews. I got a really nice one from Publishers Weekly . . . . Anything could happen, and it makes me really nervous. But it’s also exciting.”
Frankly, Hender, who went to University Elementary, Caddo Middle Magnet, and Caddo Magnet High School, had a difficult childhood. She had trouble making friends. Classmates didn’t make fun of her face-to-face, rather, they just didn’t associate with her.
“I have this experience as a child and as a teenager as being ostracized. I went into my adult life fighting the assumption that other people don’t want me in the room.”
Part – if not all – of that feeling came from the fact Hender wasn’t from these parts.
“I was born in Canada. For a long time, I always thought of myself as more Canadian than American. I didn’t get my citizenship until I was 13 or 14 years old. That’s how long the citizenship process takes. That entire time, I didn’t feel like I was connecting with people. I thought it must be because I’m Canadian. I wore that as a chip on my shoulder.”
Now, Hender realizes that wasn’t the reason for her feelings.
“It wasn’t because I was Canadian. It was because I was a weird kid. I was the art kid. I was the weird one.”
After a year at Louisiana Tech, Hender graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with a degree in comic art. While art has always been a part of Hender, writing also found its way into her bloodstream. As a youngster, Hender read a lot, and took several creative writing courses in high school.
“When you’re a kid whose number one exposure to the world is through writing, you’re going to end up being a writer at some point . . . . I communicate with the world most effectively when I can do it through a lens. I feel like I need to have a scrim in front of me that slightly obscures me, in order to get my thoughts across. I have a hard time communicating face-to-face. I am very socially anxious. If I can
put a middleman between me and the person I am trying to communicate with, like art, like comics, then that makes it a lot easier for me to communicate. Writing is a really big part of that.”
Hender already has a second book – Witch’s Inheritance – set to be released in 2026. Written for a young adult audience, it will tell a more personal story – personal to Hender.
“On paper, it’s about a girl who finds out she comes from a family of witches, and she has to deal with their problems. She’s the local witch now that her grandmother is dead, but has not idea what she is doing. But what it’s really about is finding out something about your family that you didn’t know about before. For me, I didn’t know about my family’s history of depression until I was diagnosed with depression. Then, it was like, ‘Oh, everything makes so much more sense now.’ You find out there are these demons that your family has been fighting, but you have no idea about it, and how you cope with that.”
Hender’s first book is available “wherever books are sold.”
“I went into the Barnes and Noble in Shreveport and very nicely asked them if they could please order some, and they did.”
Sure, Hender hopes her effort will be a hit. But if not, she won’t throw down the pen.
“The success of this specific book, I don’t know if it will be a detriment to me. I won’t know until I am in that situation, if it absolutely flops and I am ruined. But this particular book I love a lot. It was a labor of love. I know it’s not for everyone, and if it flops, it flops. But I will still love it and love the work I put into it.”
Contact Tony at SBJTonyT@gmail.com