Wild Greens is Where We Grow Our Creative Selves: A Conversation with Rebecca Lipperini and Hayley Boyle

Wild Greens is Where We Grow Our Creative Selves: A Conversation with Rebecca Lipperini and Hayley Boyle

by Lauren Kimball

In October 2022, Lauren Kimball, the comic artist behind Turtle and Hare, sat down with Rebecca Lipperini and Hayley Boyle to reflect on the past two years of Wild Greens.

LAUREN:  It's really nice to be chatting with you both. Rebecca, I have known you since graduate school. Hayley, I met you through Rebecca in the pre-Wild Greens (WG) days. How did you both meet?

REBECCA: Oh, this is a cute one. Hayley and I grew up across the street from each other.

HAYLEY: Yeah, we've known each other since birth, essentially. I feel like it is pretty rare to have a friendship that is literally your entire life.

L: How did your collaboration on WG begin?

R: It was summer of 2020. And at that time—I think we had toilet paper again, but there was still so much fear and panic. We were still so shut in. I had been watching a lot of friends working on creative projects. There was Lauren’s patio project and Hayley’s embroidered jacket . . .

Initially, Hayley was helping me set up the website. As I was sharing my idea, I remember asking her, Can we showcase your art or like, do you wanna do this with me? I didn’t want to presume that she wanted that level of involvement. I was really grateful because she said, Yes. She said yes to the big role.

H: We got together in person, at a park by my house. Rebecca envisioned this collaborative community project of bringing people together to share art and writing and crafts. I remember being so moved to be asked to participate, especially after living through so much sadness at the beginning of the pandemic. I had something to look forward to. It was wonderful to work with one of my longest and closest friends.

R: Our first issue in November of 2020 was so small, like a mini issue or pilot. Our December issue was the first big one. The theme for that was “Creation During COVID.” We’ve had three issues in total on that theme. We asked people, What are the ways that you turn to creativity to get through fear and uncertainty?

L: How did you come up with the magazine’s name?

H: We wanted it to feel like a garden where people would come and grow their creative selves. The creative process can be so many things: it can be deeply personal, where you’re showing your most vulnerable self, and it can be wacky, where you’re putting it all out there. And in a way, each medium is like a different plant or flower or produce. All of these different things can come together and create this really beautiful community space.

R: So much of WG has been about process over product. We’re trying to be as welcoming as possible with that sort of growth. It’s a mindset of planting seeds and making room for different things to come together.

L: I think of the themes as writing prompts. You’ve created a workshop space.

H: The theme does feel like the roots of each issue. It grounds everybody in a space, makes it feel like everybody's coming together to grow something, even though they don't know that when they're submitting their pieces. They don't know that their piece is gonna connect to somebody else's painting or poetry or prose. And yet, somehow, it all ends up kind of weaving together.

L: Did you look at any magazines as models as you were dreaming up WG?

R: I was browsing online poetry magazines for website design. I wanted to see, What do they look like? How do they present themselves? We considered a lot of ideas when it came to formatting.

I felt confident that I wanted it to be a single scroll, which a lot of people don't use, for a lot of reasons. The internet is organized by hyperlinks. But I liked the idea of having it be one reading experience. I wanted WG to feel like you could stumble across something you weren’t expecting.

H: We wanted to make it a full experience. Like, my mom's not gonna come to the magazine only to see my cover. In fact, I did just have a phone call with my mom where she said, “Oh, no, I read everything.” And sometimes she goes back to people's work because she’s so moved by it. She uses our archive. Okay, so, that's my mom. But that’s pretty special, right? And it’s not like somebody is coming to our space because they know a specific artist beyond a relative or a friend. But they keep coming back because they feel like it is a special experience.

L: What’s your favorite theme so far? The one that just tickled me to death was “Snack Time.” It made me laugh.

H: That is probably one of my top three. I really fell in love with our recent theme, “Mediocrity.” I felt super invested in the idea of “Mediocrity” at the time, because I'd been feeling a lot of pressure to keep achieving, keep being better, keep going up the professional ladder. I remember saying to Becca, “I just want to be mediocre.” I don't want to keep doing more all the time. That kept coming up as a theme in my life, so being able to make it a theme for the magazine meant a lot to me. I was terrified that nobody was gonna submit. I kept thinking, everyone's gonna say this sucks. Nobody's gonna send in any art. No one's gonna write about this, because people are afraid to write about their mediocrity. I just had these messages in my head. And then we got amazing stuff, beautiful work. There were people coming together without even knowing that they were coming together. It made me feel so validated.

L: It sounds like you were wrestling with this fear—which it turns out everyone has—that I’m the only one who is not okay, who is not measuring up.

H: Yeah, 100%

L: What about you, Rebecca? What’s your favorite theme?

R: I've really been enjoying Volume 2. We had a really intimate January issue, “Generosity.” It was a much smaller issue than we usually put out. I found some calm in that. Then February was “Escape,” and that's my other favorite for the exact opposite reason. That theme really connected with people. We had an explosion of submissions.

L: You have a window into what resonates with people. In February, we were just starting to climb out of our quarantine and go places. Winter was lifting. It was a seasonal theme and a cultural one.

What's your vision for the future? And you could just say, “More of the same!”

R: We've been talking about this a lot. So, we had year one, which was, as Hayley says, “Figuring It Out.” Year two was about growing the team. In addition to finding more contributors and readers, we've been able to find some really amazing people to volunteer their time to help put the issues together: Jacqueline, Maggie, Tim, Myra, and Jessica. The magazine just would not exist if we didn't have them. We've never missed a deadline. We never plan to, but a month is a tight turnaround.

So, year three? User experience. We have been working on beautifying and standardizing past issues in the archive, checking website speeds, and making each issue easier to read and navigate. Maggie has been working hard on that. And merch. I can finally say that WG merch is coming.  

H: It’s also really important to us to be able to continue to tip our artists. Right now we have readers, contributors, and even people on our editorial team donating to the magazine because they believe that it's important to pay people for their art and writing.

L: That's amazing.

H: We do call them tips, because it is certainly not the value worth of what people are submitting. Both of us feel really strongly that the tips are such an important part of seeing somebody for the work that they're creating. So many of us create because that's what we're driven to do but also, how nice is it to be paid for that work?

L: What has surprised you the most about WG?

H: That people continue to submit and read it. I have such imposter syndrome. Every month I'm blown away that we continue to have return contributors as well as new people who find us through word of mouth, Instagram, or however. What has surprised me is that people read it and love it and keep coming back, and then tell their friends and family about it, and then they love it.

R: Every month I get a big text from my mother-in-law about every single thing she read in the issue and how much she loved it. When people go out of their way to tell me what they connected with in the issue, or that they sat down and read the whole thing—it’s the best.

L: One of the most surprising things for me is that it feels like a real community. I don’t have internet relationships. I don’t even use Instagram that much, but I use it more now. I want to check in on the artists that I know from WG. If I ever repost a comic, I usually get some love from the WG community, too.

Another surprise is that there are people I know personally who found WG. One of my close friends from college published a story, but I didn’t know until I sat down to read the issue. It was like being at a wedding. I saw people from disparate parts of my life together in the same room.  

R: Hayley and I have both had family members contribute. There’s something about WG that makes it feel like an exciting and comfortable place to share what you’ve been creating, even if you might not have felt safe sharing them elsewhere.

H: So many people have this narrative that, Well, I create, or I write, but it's not good enough to publish. I just don't believe that's true. WG may not be the right place for everyone, but no matter what art you're creating, there is a place out there for it. Rebecca and I try to tell people, Don’t stop here. Your art is valuable. Your writing is valuable. A “no” doesn’t mean your work is bad. It just means, let's work on it a little more or get some feedback or find another place that is a good fit.

R: Something that really surprised me is how many people in my life have committed to making WG a part of their life every month. Like Lauren and Hayley, you have never once missed a deadline or not shown up.

L: It's really important to me. It is what’s keeping me creative right now, when I’m busy. It’s part of my monthly routine. There’s a blessing and a curse with deadlines. The blessing is that they can be a way to make something a part of your life, by creating a slot for it.

H: One of the sayings I’ve fallen in love with recently is, “Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Sometimes having a deadline means that you just get it out because it's good enough. As somebody who does a lot of procrastinating because I’m a perfectionist, it is helpful. There have been months that I’ve hated my cover—like, hated it. I’m just like, whatever, it’s got to go out. It’s kept me creating. I'm continuing to paint, which is so important to me. I don't make time for it otherwise.

R: It reminds me of what I tell my students: Writing is never done, it’s only due.