Renowned Canadian indie pop award-winning musicians, bestseller authors and lesbian twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin explored music, writing and first crushes through the middle school lens in conversation with best seller author, historian and Smarter in Seconds YouTube content creator Blair Imani Nov. 2 at Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood.
The event was done in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival and Old Town School of Folk Music.
Tegan and Sara published their young adult autobiographically-inspired graphic novel Junior High in 2023, and recently published their second book in the series, Crush, focused on a mostly fictionalized version of their eighth-grade year. They also created the Tegan and Sara Foundation in 2016 to raise funds and fight for LGBTQ+ equality and justice; Imani serves as one of the board members.
Imani noted that Tegan and Sara’s current book Crush “is about sisterhood, love and queerness and obviously about crushes … [Y]ou have debuted this book at a time when the very mention of books that discuss LGBTQ+ people are being banned. What inspired you to tell this story the way that you did at this particular time in history?”
Sara said that, about seven years ago, she and Tegan thought it would be a good idea to put together a longer-form story of their experiences as twin sisters, queer people and musicians and not let others control what was said about them in the media. They started with their memoir High School, but were asked to make their story “less scary and upsetting and less drugs” so middle schoolers could read it.
“We said we would love to,” Sara said. The publisher suggested a graphic novel approach and linked them up with graphic novel cartoonist Tillie Walden to do the images for the books.
Imani asked about the different approaches between their Junior High and Crush graphic novels.
Tegan said that Junior High is about what really happened. The publishers told them to take their high school experience, modernize it and put it in the middle grades. Then with Crush, Tegan said, they “were allowed to flourish creatively and get more into the fictional space” and create new characters. For example, one storyline entails “a young Tegan and Sara get a manager and become obsessed with going behind the scenes content to get their band out there.”
Tegan said that, with these two books, she and Sara wanted to add their voices to the queer books space for middle-schooler audiences since currently more young people have identified themselves as members of the LGBTQ+ community than in past generations. She added that she would have loved books like these when she was in middle school.
They also discussed book bans and the need for more people to fight back against them. So far, none of Tegan and Sara’s books have been banned. Tegan pointed out that she read The Shining at age eight and is “fine.”
Sara spoke about the twins’ collaboration with Walden and how they knew immediately that she was the perfect person to work with. She noted that Walden is also a twin and queer person with “an empathy and sensitivity, and central heartbeat in her work.” Tegan also praised Walden’s work and contributions to Junior High and Crush.
Tegan shared photos from eighth grade, when the twins first expressed a desire to make music but would not officially pick up guitars for two more years. She said they pulled moments from their musical careers for Crush, including their first performance that was told as a battle of the bands contest which they lose (in real life, they won when they were 17- years-old).
Sara said that in real life she felt like their narrative “got taken away” from them after they won that battle of the bands contest. She didn’t experience that as a win because, although she did feel excited and thrilled, she also felt scared, intruded upon and thrust into adult spaces where they were criticized in ways that never happened before. In Crush, even though their characters didn’t win the contest, Tegan and Sara decided that the narrative would include an interest in what the band had to offer in the future, to show readers there is hope even after a loss.
Imani asked who their first crushes were.
Tegan said Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block and, more so, her mother’s friend Karen, while Sara said Susan Sarandon in The Client. Tegan and Sara asked Imani who her crush was and she said Xena.
A Q&A session followed where a young girl asked which of the two books they liked the best, and both Sara and Tegan said Crush. A young woman asked what advice they would give. Tegan said to get focused and “do it for yourself,” while Sara said to “create structure in your work and chip away at it until it is completed.”