Exactly the Same But Completely Different — Comics About Parenting
- Alli Katz
- Kelly Writers House
-
Independent Creative Production Grant
A self portrait of Alli Katz with her two children, who are featured heavily in her work.
Through a collection of diary comics, Alli Katz will document the many hilarious paradoxes of pregnancy and parenting small children: the singular shared experiences, the communal loneliness, the frustrating delight, the carefully-scheduled chaos, and the absolutely infuriating, transcendent joy. Since becoming pregnant with her first child in 2018, Katz has been documenting pregnancy and motherhood through comics on Instagram and through the publication of two small comic chapbooks/minicomics: Nine Months but Actually Ten Months but Actually Forever and Just Pretend Your Boob is a Hoagie.
“I hope that my work is funny, and occasionally poignant – and that it resonates with readers and their own beautiful, messy, and chaotic experience during the – as they say – the longest shortest time.”
Katz will use this grant to complete what she originally conceived of (pun intended?) as a trilogy, but may be more aptly composed as five self-published minicomics. The first two are completed: the first details her pregnancy and the birth of her first child, Penelope; the second is about the struggles of breast and combination feeding Penelope as an infant. The third is in-progress, called Exactly the Same But Completely Different, about having her second child, Arthur. The other two are in the planning stages – one, about working full-time and parenting called, tentatively, Nine to Five to Midnight to Two to Five to Nine Again, and finally, And Now Here You Are a Whole Person, on the absolute awe of watching babies grow up.