Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Stephanie Cooke (Pillow Talk)!
Meet the Author: Stephanie Cooke
Stephanie Cooke is an award-winning writer and editor based out of Toronto, Canada. She’s an avid reader, gamer, movie watcher, and lover of puns.
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About the Book: Pillow Talk
When college freshman Grace Mendes reluctantly attends her first pillow fight match, she falls in love with the surprisingly gritty sport.
Despite her usually shy, introverted, and reserved nature, Grace decides to try out for the Pillow Fight Federation (PFF), a locally famous league of fighters with larger-than-life personas like Pain Eyre, Miss Fortune, and champion Kat Atonic. They may battle with pillows, but there is nothing soft about these fighters. The first and only rule to pillow fighting is that the pillow needs to be the first point of contact; after that, everything else goes.
Grace struggles with deep-seated body image issues, so she is especially shocked when she makes the competitive league and is welcomed into the fold of close knit, confident fighters. As her first official fight performing as newly crafted alter-ego/ring persona Cinderhella looms on the horizon, the real battle taking place is between Grace and her growing insecurities. What if people laugh or make fun of her? Why did she think she could pillow fight in the first place when she doesn’t look like your “typical” athlete?
Turns out, no one is laughing when Cinderhella dominates her first match in the ring. And as her alter-ego rises through the ranks of the PFF, gaining traction and online fame (and online trolls), can Grace use the spotlight to become an icon for not just others, but most importantly, for herself?
Pillow Talk is an inclusive, high-octane, outrageously fun graphic novel that aims a punch at the impossibly high standards set for women in sports (and otherwise) and champions the power of finding a team that will, quite literally, fight for you. A knock-out!
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
This is actually based on a (partially) true story! Back in 2004, the Pillow Fight League was formed here in Toronto. It was a semi-professional league that really did gain a lot of “underground” traction and attention. It went on hiatus after several years until it was briefly brought back in 2016. One of my good friends was the president of the league at that time and asked me to participate in a tryout session. I hadn’t heard of it before…and did no research before agreeing to do it! An important lesson was learned that day: always do your research!
I fought in two matches, and in the second, rolled my ankle so badly that I thought I broke it and had to go to the ER. I was fine but decided that maybe pillow fighting wasn’t for me after all. But the whole experience stuck with me and I knew I wanted to use it in a story in the future…and here we are! The characters and the story itself—even my version of the pillow fight league—are fictional, but based on a very real thing.
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
That’s tough! Grace and Callie are two characters that I put a lot of myself into—Grace represents a lot of my own insecurities and self-confidence issues. And Callie’s journey to processing and understanding her sexuality is very similar to my own. So I have a big soft spot for them both, having poured so much of myself into their identities. But honestly, all of the characters were a lot of fun to write.
YABC: Which came first, the title or the novel?
Kind of both, I think! I remember being in a group chat with a few other creators friends who I was working on a different project with. I told them about the experience with the actual pillow fight league, and started spit balling the idea for the story, and the title just came to me. So I guess technically the story came first…but only ever so slightly.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
It’s been a couple of months since I read it but I can’t stop thinking about Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. It’s such an incredible book! The premise revolves around two wives—one who is left behind as the other goes on an exploratory deep-sea dive with a small group of researchers. The researcher goes missing for several months, only to return under mysterious circumstances. The story goes back and forth between the researcher as the exploratory dive goes on and the wife in present time once her wife returns to her. It becomes increasingly obvious that something is not okay, as we work our way towards finding out what happened and what’s going on. It’s fantastic!
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
This is both a blessing and a curse but I have a people magnet. Sometimes it’s amazing! Other times, it’s not. Regardless, I always seem to come out of those magnetism moments with a story—but the superpower in the amazing side of things is that I always seem to run into exactly the person I need at the time. Several years back, I got the idea that I wanted to do a live radio play. But I had no clue where to start. Thankfully, I happened to get invited to a meetup event that was happening in the city and—unknowingly at the time—connected with a podcast producer and music composer, as well as a theatre director. That whole project was so much fun to do, and in a nutshell, that’s my one superpower.
YABC: Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?
I guess this sort of goes hand in hand with the my favourite character question. Since Grace and Callie had a lot of my own insecurities in them, there were moments when it was really hard to put some of their story down on paper. I struggled at times to really put to words the emotions and feelings that I wanted to have conveyed. It took time, a few drafts, and amazing editor (thank you forever, Lily!) to help me work through all of it.
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
EVERYTHING!!!! But I mean, honestly, it just tells you everything that you need to know—it’s so dynamic, eye-catching, and encapsulates so much of the story with just two characters. Mel Valentine Vargas is an incredible artist and I feel so blessed to have worked on this graphic novel with them, and colourist Sam Pointon.
YABC: Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
Always be flexible as a creator. Know when to let ideas, characters, and specifics go…I guess that falls under being able to “kill your darlings,” so to speak. But in addition to that, always try to grow and better yourself as a writer. There’s always something new to learn and take in, and for me, that’s one of the most exciting parts of each and every project I get to work on.
YABC: What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2024?
I’m such a big fan of T. Kingfisher, so I’m beyond excited for A Sorceress Comes to Call. I’m very much in my dark fairy tale era of reading, and even though I have a gazillion other books in my TBR pile, the moment a new T. Kingfisher comes out, I need to drop everything to read it.
Title: Pillow Talk
Author: Stephanie Cooke
Illustrator: Mel Valentine Vargas
Release Date: April 30, 2024
Publisher: HarperAlley
Genre: YA Coming-of-age
Age Range: 14+
