Ariel Schrag

Sister Spit: the Next Generation just started their Fall '09 tour! This year's tour features Ben McCoy, Kirya Traber, Sara Seinberg, Ariel Schrag, Beth Lisick, Rhiannon Argo, and of course, Sister Spit and RADAR founder Michelle Tea. This month's article from the Bitch archives is a flashback to Issue #11 (before there were even themes!), where a young Kira Garcia tags along for 1990's Sister Spit tour. Check out her tour diary, "Why Don't We do it on the road" online! Read on for tour dates or visit their official site (they're also heading out again next April).

During the 1990s, while still in high school, Ariel Schrag produced a number of autobiographical comics — Awkward, about her freshman year, Definition, about her sophomore year, and Potential, about her junior year. The series started off as a relatively light, entertaining look at high school life — crushes, getting drunk, obsessing about bands, hanging out with friends. Over the course of the three books, however, Schrag dealt with more and more fraught material: her parent’s divorce, her coming out, and finally her devastating relationship and break-up with her girlfriend, Sally.
Schrag finished the writing and drawing for Likewise, about her senior year, soon after she graduated from high school, but then college and life — including a stint writing for the L-word — intervened. She didn’t complete the inking for another decade. The book was finally published by Touchstone this year. I spoke to Schrag about it on May 1.