1. Congratulations on the publication of Cannon! This was your second outing in long-form storytelling and a fair while in the making — was there anything new that you wanted to try this time around? What did this process look like for you? Was it very different to Stone Fruit?
Thank you! Yes, I took my sweet time with this one. I came out of making Stone Fruit raring to go and convinced the next project would go faster… two years into the pandemic and I really had to eat my words. My partner, my editor and my agent helped me trim a good 70 superfluous pages out of the final version, which is not an easy choice when it has already been pencilled out! With a larger set of characters in this story, my eyes were too big for the book’s stomach: I really had to keep revising whose story I was telling and what the north star was.
Despite the plot-line still being rather serious at times, I did manage to a have a lot of fun with this one after spending so much time on heavy heartbreak themes in the last book. I wanted to be a bit more silly and soapy with my plot lines (a trashed restaurant, for example) and paint with a bit more simplicity. Try out some cheap millennial gags. Throw a bit more sex and gossip in there.
2. Uniquely, Cannon is framed by Cannon's meditative practice (or her attempts at it). What did creating this sort of structure come to fruition for you?
More than anything, the meditation sequences ended up being a useful sound-scape strategy, to allow me to stitch together parallel sequences between different characters going about their lives. On an emotional level though, Cannon’s relationship to ‘that new-age shit’, as Trish calls it, ends up being much like my own: a very useful tool, but an ineffective way to circumvent confrontation with real, pressing life problems.
3. Sort of tying in with the meditation framing, one of the most stark features in the book is your selective use of red. (The double spread? Exquisite.) What was your process like to select these panels and work in the colour like this?
One of the benefits of being so married to black and white is that a little colour goes a long way as a narrative device. I really enjoyed myself with those red panels, and connecting them to sounds, moments of rage, moments of fear, and all those silly horror scenes. There’s something ridiculous about anger: at the peak of the wave, it can so easily switch into something comedic. I enjoyed the chance to create some visual links between those campy, vintage horror scenes and Cannon’s own rage: marrying the silly and the serious together with something as pure as the feeling of anger, overwhelm or panic.
4. Something that struck me in Cannon is that it's so joyfully, unquestioningly multicultural, and where there are non-English words or phrases, they're not translated. It really helped ground the book's setting for me, and coming from a multilingual household myself, this made me feel more at home. However, I find that publishing as an industry (especially in novels) is still very hesitant to allow this sort of language exchange. What are your feelings on this? Was this casual lack of translation something you had to fight for?
Thanks! I’m so glad this part spoke to you. I didn’t actually have a hard time advocating for the multilingual moments in the book: one of the many benefits of working with indie publishers, I think. My editor was enthusiastic about leaving the non-English phrases un-translated, so long as there were enough context clues in the surrounding dialogue. I feel similarly about inserting non-English moments into the story as I do about writing hyper-specific details of queerness: they’re there for the people who get it to enjoy— a little wink and a nod. It’s such a thrill to experience a text and catch those details: I remember experiencing this with Alice Wu’s wonderful 2004 film Saving Face, and recently with Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby.
5. Like Stone Fruit, Cannon explores complex friend and familial ties, and how these can spill over to impact the other areas of your life. As a reader who's mostly drawn to character-driven stories, I love this. Do you think you'll continue in this vein? Are there any other relationships you're interested in delving deeper into?
I am also a reader who’s drawn to character-driven stories, so I imagine I will indeed continue in this vein! I love writing dialogue and I’m chronically nosy about what’s going on for my peers and loved ones, so I can’t imagine my work’s going to depart from a focus on relational dynamics anytime soon. There’s TOO many relationships I’m interesting in writing more about, but to keep it to a succinct list: senior-parent, adult-child relationships have really been on my mind ; power-exchange and friendship between dominants and submissives ; the simultaneous antagonism and deep love between siblings ; the joys and exasperations to be found in leftist organizing spaces. To name a few!
6. Part of the relational backbone between Cannon and Trish is that they've grown up together after finding each other as sort of the only other queer, Asian kids in school. I think this dynamic of clumping with the 'only other' that you find is familiar to a lot of us, but like these characters, it can be hard to know if/when the relationship has shifted from being a necessary liferaft to being an active choice. Do you think that Cannon and Trish have reached that point by the end of the book?
I actually wrote the first draft of this story with the intention to break Cannon and Trish’s relevancy to each other, and depict a relationship in which those identity-ties became no longer crucial. And then as I ventured into the story, I realized I couldn’t bear to do that and took the story into a more hopefully, but ultimately more ambivalent direction. Ultimately I think we’re constantly having to assess and renew our importance and agreements to one another in our long-term friendships. I’m not sure if Cannon and Trish are anywhere certain by the end of the book, but my hope is that they’ve learned a lot during their very uncomfortable period of questioning.
7. Cannon and Trish spend a lot of time watching horror classics together. What would you recommend they watch next? What about your readers? Why?
Hereditary if they, and readers, would like to have the living daylights scared out of them. Though perhaps more on theme of classic-genre, I watched Sinners recently and found that it used all the jump-scares and cheesiness and vampire-tropes to create something searing and stirring and moving.
8. Lastly: what was the book that first made you feel represented?
When I was in high school, I read Skim by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki which is about a mixed-race, Asian girl who is gothy, grumpy, gay, and very at-odds with the teenagers around her who seem to be so good at participating in ‘normal’ life. Hit the mark, to an embarrassing degree, in many places.
Thank you! Yes, I took my sweet time with this one. I came out of making Stone Fruit raring to go and convinced the next project would go faster… two years into the pandemic and I really had to eat my words. My partner, my editor and my agent helped me trim a good 70 superfluous pages out of the final version, which is not an easy choice when it has already been pencilled out! With a larger set of characters in this story, my eyes were too big for the book’s stomach: I really had to keep revising whose story I was telling and what the north star was.
Despite the plot-line still being rather serious at times, I did manage to a have a lot of fun with this one after spending so much time on heavy heartbreak themes in the last book. I wanted to be a bit more silly and soapy with my plot lines (a trashed restaurant, for example) and paint with a bit more simplicity. Try out some cheap millennial gags. Throw a bit more sex and gossip in there.
2. Uniquely, Cannon is framed by Cannon's meditative practice (or her attempts at it). What did creating this sort of structure come to fruition for you?
More than anything, the meditation sequences ended up being a useful sound-scape strategy, to allow me to stitch together parallel sequences between different characters going about their lives. On an emotional level though, Cannon’s relationship to ‘that new-age shit’, as Trish calls it, ends up being much like my own: a very useful tool, but an ineffective way to circumvent confrontation with real, pressing life problems.
3. Sort of tying in with the meditation framing, one of the most stark features in the book is your selective use of red. (The double spread? Exquisite.) What was your process like to select these panels and work in the colour like this?
One of the benefits of being so married to black and white is that a little colour goes a long way as a narrative device. I really enjoyed myself with those red panels, and connecting them to sounds, moments of rage, moments of fear, and all those silly horror scenes. There’s something ridiculous about anger: at the peak of the wave, it can so easily switch into something comedic. I enjoyed the chance to create some visual links between those campy, vintage horror scenes and Cannon’s own rage: marrying the silly and the serious together with something as pure as the feeling of anger, overwhelm or panic.
4. Something that struck me in Cannon is that it's so joyfully, unquestioningly multicultural, and where there are non-English words or phrases, they're not translated. It really helped ground the book's setting for me, and coming from a multilingual household myself, this made me feel more at home. However, I find that publishing as an industry (especially in novels) is still very hesitant to allow this sort of language exchange. What are your feelings on this? Was this casual lack of translation something you had to fight for?
Thanks! I’m so glad this part spoke to you. I didn’t actually have a hard time advocating for the multilingual moments in the book: one of the many benefits of working with indie publishers, I think. My editor was enthusiastic about leaving the non-English phrases un-translated, so long as there were enough context clues in the surrounding dialogue. I feel similarly about inserting non-English moments into the story as I do about writing hyper-specific details of queerness: they’re there for the people who get it to enjoy— a little wink and a nod. It’s such a thrill to experience a text and catch those details: I remember experiencing this with Alice Wu’s wonderful 2004 film Saving Face, and recently with Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby.
5. Like Stone Fruit, Cannon explores complex friend and familial ties, and how these can spill over to impact the other areas of your life. As a reader who's mostly drawn to character-driven stories, I love this. Do you think you'll continue in this vein? Are there any other relationships you're interested in delving deeper into?
I am also a reader who’s drawn to character-driven stories, so I imagine I will indeed continue in this vein! I love writing dialogue and I’m chronically nosy about what’s going on for my peers and loved ones, so I can’t imagine my work’s going to depart from a focus on relational dynamics anytime soon. There’s TOO many relationships I’m interesting in writing more about, but to keep it to a succinct list: senior-parent, adult-child relationships have really been on my mind ; power-exchange and friendship between dominants and submissives ; the simultaneous antagonism and deep love between siblings ; the joys and exasperations to be found in leftist organizing spaces. To name a few!
6. Part of the relational backbone between Cannon and Trish is that they've grown up together after finding each other as sort of the only other queer, Asian kids in school. I think this dynamic of clumping with the 'only other' that you find is familiar to a lot of us, but like these characters, it can be hard to know if/when the relationship has shifted from being a necessary liferaft to being an active choice. Do you think that Cannon and Trish have reached that point by the end of the book?
I actually wrote the first draft of this story with the intention to break Cannon and Trish’s relevancy to each other, and depict a relationship in which those identity-ties became no longer crucial. And then as I ventured into the story, I realized I couldn’t bear to do that and took the story into a more hopefully, but ultimately more ambivalent direction. Ultimately I think we’re constantly having to assess and renew our importance and agreements to one another in our long-term friendships. I’m not sure if Cannon and Trish are anywhere certain by the end of the book, but my hope is that they’ve learned a lot during their very uncomfortable period of questioning.
7. Cannon and Trish spend a lot of time watching horror classics together. What would you recommend they watch next? What about your readers? Why?
Hereditary if they, and readers, would like to have the living daylights scared out of them. Though perhaps more on theme of classic-genre, I watched Sinners recently and found that it used all the jump-scares and cheesiness and vampire-tropes to create something searing and stirring and moving.
8. Lastly: what was the book that first made you feel represented?
When I was in high school, I read Skim by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki which is about a mixed-race, Asian girl who is gothy, grumpy, gay, and very at-odds with the teenagers around her who seem to be so good at participating in ‘normal’ life. Hit the mark, to an embarrassing degree, in many places.
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About the author
Lee Lai is an Australian cartoonist living in Tio’tia:ke (colonially known as Montreal, Canada). In 2021, she was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 for her debut graphic novel, Stone Fruit, which went on to win several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award, the Cartoonist Studio Prize, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, and two Ignatz Awards. Her comics have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Granta, and the Museum of Modern Art’s Magazine. Her second graphic novel, Cannon, was released by Giramondo in September 2025.
