LK James is an illustrator and designer based in Atlanta. LK does layout design and cover illustration for Newfound’s chapbooks.
PATRYCJA HUMIENIK: Tell me about where you’re from and where you’re based now?
LK JAMES: I grew up in Northern California, in a small farming town called Colusa, right on the Sacramento River. We'd spend the summers floating on inner-tubes, and sometimes in the winter, when it flooded, we'd canoe in the State Park through the treetops. When I was young, I was itching to leave. Now when I go back, I stay as long as possible. I went to college in Portland, Oregon, moved to Western Massachusetts, then Austin, Texas, (where I met Levis and started working with Newfound), back to Portland for grad school, and I now live in Atlanta. I moved out here with my partner and my dog last summer.
HUMIENIK: You've lived in many different regions of the US! How do you find different places/landscapes influencing your work?
JAMES: More than the landscapes and different architecture, living in so many places has nurtured an explorer's attitude in me, which has had a big influence on my work. I easily get restless if I feel I'm not learning anything new in my studio practice or pushing toward some place I haven't been yet.
HUMIENIK: Do you have an early drawing memory?
JAMES: I drew a lot as kid with my sister. We would make little storybooks on folded binder paper about monsters, our neighborhood, our parents. There was a television show we'd watch on PBS (I think it was called the “Imagination Station”) on which with a guy in a red track suit and mustache taught you how to draw cartoon characters and 3D boxes etc.—he could always blow my mind. I remember when I was like 5 or 6 finally understanding how to draw that rim at the base of Mickey Mouse's glove—it felt like I cracked some kind of code. I drew him all the time.
HUMIENIK: What are you working on these days?
JAMES: Lots of book projects these days. I'm working on finishing up another children's book (my first, “The Full House and the Empty House,” was published by Ripple Grove Press this past February). The next Newfound chapbook is shaping up to be published—I did the interior layout and cover design for that. I'm also working with the Platform Review out of New Jersey designing the layout and covers for their first chapbook contest. Song Cave is publishing a book of poems by Mark Leidner this fall—I illustrated the cover. Awst Press will be publishing their first novel in early 2020—I recently finished the cover illustration and interior layout for that one, too.
HUMIENIK: What do you hope kids and families will get out of your children’s books?
JAMES: What interests me in making children's books is working with text and image. A good picture-book is like a tight prism of poetry that can spark the imagination and an interest in language. I think if we can learn those things early and often, we become better communicators, are more interested in the world around us, and can more easily imagine a reality other than our own.
A good picture-book is like a tight prism of poetry that can spark the imagination and an interest in language. I think if we can learn those things early and often, we become better communicators, are more interested in the world around us, and can more easily imagine a reality other than our own. —LK James
HUMIENIK: How did you start working with Newfound?
JAMES: I started working with Newfound back in 2016 when they published “21 Extremely Bad Breakups,” a short story by Mark Leidner. Coincidentally, Leidner was visiting me in Austin when he got the email saying his work had been selected for publishing. Partly because he knew and liked my work, partly because I knew and liked his, and partly because of the serendipity of the whole thing, Leidner recommended me for the cover illustration. I've been working with Newfound ever since, illustrating the covers and designing the layouts for their chapbooks.
HUMIENIK: What’s your process like when designing chapbooks? Have you found anything particularly interesting/challenging about it?
JAMES: I always start with reading the manuscript, making little notes of imagery and things that come to mind while doing so. I sketch on those notes for a few days and start working on the interior layout—messing around with the typography of a script helps me figure out the visual vibes of the book, which helps me narrow down my cover ideas. One of the many reasons I love working with Newfound is that Levis understands what a difference good material choices can make in the feel of a book. At the beginning of the cover design process, he and I yap about what kind of paper I'm dreaming of and what kind of print method to use. I really geek-out in those kinds of conversations and it's so nice to feel my enthusiasm met equally.
Sometimes I move from manuscript to illustrated cover and completed layout in just a few moves—with other chaps we go through three or four rounds before I land on a winner. That part of the process is always fascinating to me: expressing a text in many different visual styles and how each one changes the tone or the read of the text. Even though it is sometimes a challenge to get it just right, it is what I love most about designing books.
Patrycja Humienik is a trilingual Polish-American writer and performance artist. Her poetry is featured/forthcoming in Passages North, The Shallow Ends, Yemassee, and No Tender Fences: An Online Anthology of Immigrant & First-Gen Poetry. She works in service of underrepresented grad students and faculty at the University of Washington.