In conversation with the book’s authors, Luke C Jackson and Kelly Jackson

Luke C Jackson is a teacher, and the author of novels, games, and films. Kelly Jackson is a teacher and educational writer, and was lead researcher for this book. They began their own IVF journey in 2011, and are now parents of two daughters. Two-Week Wait: an IVF story is their first graphic novel.

Q: How would you describe ‘Two-Week Wait’?

Luke: The book is the story of one couple’s IVF journey. It honours the role that both partners play, examining the physical, mental, and financial struggles they must go through once they make the decision to undergo this strange, sometimes dehumanising, but - hopefully - rewarding process.

Q: Who are the protagonists?

Luke: The book’s lead characters are Joanne and Conrad, a couple in their mid-thirties. They met at university. Having spent much of their twenties traveling, they eventually got married, and settled into their careers and a house shortly thereafter. They had always assumed they had plenty of time to start a family.

Kelly: In the period during which the book is set, Joanne is working as a Primary School teacher, where she must ‘parent’ the students in front of her while facing her own fertility demons. As the story goes on, the stress of undergoing IVF really challenges their relationship. There are also a bunch of secondary characters, including Conrad and Joanne’s friends and family, who either try to offer advice, or who are going through struggles of their own. They represent the diverse views of the wider community to infertility.

Q: Why write about IVF?

Kelly: Infertility affects 1 in 6 couples, or 186 million people around the world. In Australia and New Zealand, more than 70,000 cycles of IVF (or in-vitro fertilisation) are performed each year. We went through the process in 2011/2012 and again in 2015. We hope that, by depicting the issues involved with the process in an accessible manner, the book will not only appeal to a general audience, but will be the perfect book for those who are currently undergoing IVF, those who are considering it, and those who have undergone their own IVF journey and now want to reflect upon it. The story is based loosely upon our experience, but our own memories are supplemented with those of other people who have undergone IVF, to broaden the depiction and heighten both the drama and the comedy of the journey.

Q: Why a graphic novel?

Luke: I’ve always been a comic book fan, and used to hang out in comic book shops like Minotaur when it was still a secretive sub-culture, long before Spiderman and Batman became mainstream or Marvel ever considered purchasing one of the city’s biggest sports stadiums. Back then, you were either a fan, or you stayed away, really. So I guess I always wanted to write my own comics. As I entered my twenties, I sought out comics - or graphic novels - that took a more serious look at life. Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus (Penguin, 2003) is the perfect example, and reading his commentary Metamaus (Random House/Pantheon Books, 2011) should convince anybody who still questions the literary value of graphic novels to get off the fence. I was really inspired to see the success of Nicki Greenberg’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby (Allen & Unwin, 2007), and had the chance to discuss the book with her when she spoke at my local library. All those factors made me think that one day I’d like to write a graphic novel of my own.

Kelly: For me, the idea of writing a graphic novel came about when we were in the middle of our IVF treatment and we were having difficulty communicating. We both wanted to help each other through it, but we were struggling with our own worries, and it sort of felt like there wasn’t the language to express it. One day, we left the IVF clinic in East Melbourne and went for a coffee, and we started talking about how good it would be if there was a book that showed the process from both partners’ perspectives … a non-medical book that used humour and drama to really get to the heart of the exeperience. And Luke said maybe it should be a graphic novel. I wasn’t as familiar with the medium as he was, but over the next couple of years I began reading the classics, and - I am an art teacher, so I know the power of an image - I started to appreciate how much could be said by combining words and pictures.

Q: Which books most influenced Two-Week Wait?

Kelly: One of our biggest influences was Our Cancer Year (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994), by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabnar. We loved the way that the book showed both partners’ perspectives of the life-changing medical procedure that Pekar was going through. Their perspectives are not just ‘dual’, but ‘duelling’, as Harvey attempts to avoid and deflect, and Joyce acts as the voice of reason.

We also love the work of Roz Chast, particularly her graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury, 2014), which depicts the author/illustrator’s caring but sometimes combative relationship with her ageing and ailing parents, neither of whom want to talk about ‘the future’. Chast’s decades of experience as a cartoonist for the New Yorker are on show here. It’s a really touching book, but is written and illustrated with a light touch given the powerful subject matter.

Luke: Another major influence on us is Alison Bechdel, whose graphic novel Fun Home (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) is one of the most powerful autobiographical comics. It presents its concepts poignantly while taking advantage of the unique affordances of the graphic novel format. This was a challenge that we knew our illustrator – Mara Wilde – would be up for.

Q: Speaking of Mara Wild, is it true she was a student of yours?

Luke: That’s right. I was teaching a subject called Visual Narratives at Deakin University in 2013, and I was fortunate enough to have Mara in my class. I knew, when I saw her portfolio, that if I ever had an idea for a graphic novel, she’d be the first person I would call. Her style was so accessible, and yet so elevated; she really brought a fine art sensibility to visual storytelling.

To learn more about Mara’s process in creating the illustrations, view Anatomy of a Page.