Ariel Schrag

Ariel Schrag (born December 29, 1979) is an American cartoonist and television writer who achieved critical recognition at an early age for her autobiographical comics. Her novel Adam provoked controversy with its theme of a heterosexual teenage boy becoming drawn into the LGBTQ community of New York. Schrag accepts the label of ‘dyke comic book artist’.

Career While attending Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California, Schrag self-published her first comic series, Awkward, depicting events from her first year, originally selling copies to friends and family. Schrag then published three more graphic novels based on her next three years of school: Definition, Potential, and Likewise. The comics describe Schrag's experiences with family life, going to concerts, drug-taking, high school crushes, and coming out as bisexual and later as lesbian.

Schrag graduated from high school in 1998. She graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in English in 2003, and has continued to work as a cartoonist and writer. and for the second season of the HBO series How To Make It in America.

The documentary Confession: A Film About Ariel Schrag was released in 2004. It explores the then-23-year-old Schrag's world in which she "negotiates fame, obsesses about disease, and discusses the way she sees as a dyke comic book artist."

Schrag is a part-time faculty member at The New School in Manhattan, where she teaches in the writing program. Schrag participates in the artistic community Yaddo, and the queer-centric creative retreat Radar Lab. In 2014, Schrag published her novel Adam, which in 2019 was adapted into a film of the same name.

Works

High school comics Slave Labor Graphics subsequently reprinted Awkward as a graphic novel. Her follow-up works Definition, Potential, and Likewise were republished by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in 2008 and 2009.

In an interview with The Rumpus, Schrag stated that she was inspired to write Adam while working on the third season of The L Word. All of the writers on that season were lesbian women except one straight, cisgender man, Adam Rapp. Schrag found the situation unusual and imagined Rapp going to gay bars pretending to be a transgender man to collect material for writing on the show. She decided to write a novel based on the concept, initially picturing the character Adam as an adult male. Eventually she decided that it would be in poor taste, and revised the character as a love-struck teenager, stating she believed it was more sympathetic that way because "a teenager is clueless". She also mentioned having lesbian friends who were attracted to trans men, and thought that "a teenage boy could clean up if he got in there."

In addition to being inspired by co-worker Adam Rapp, Schrag drew inspiration from her experiences in the New York LGBT scene around 2006, while she was in her 20s. She started writing the book in 2007, and retained the setting even though the book was not released until 2014; it wound up a period piece as a result.

Schrag was also interested in exploring her perceptions of the LGBT community and the subtle prejudices its members may hold.

Anthologies Juicy Mother, edited by Jennifer Camper, (2005, Soft Skull Press ) Juicy Mother 2: How They Met, edited by Jennifer Camper, (2007, Manic D Press, ) "Dyke March", in How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity edited by Michael Cart, (2009, HarperTeen, 2009 ) No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, edited by Justin Hall, (2012, Fantagraphics Books, )

In popular culture Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".