The Fire Never Goes Out
Biography of author:
ND Stevenson (formerly Noelle Stevenson) is an American comic book author/illustrator living in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Molly. Stevenson was born in South Carolina in 1991, though attended college at Maryland Institute College of Art, and graduated in 2013. During a break from college, he worked in California with BOOM! Studios, which inspired him to continue with comic writing and publishing.
While still in college, he began work on a character named ‘Nimona’ and a webcomic that told Nimona’s story and used her name as a title. The webcomic gained attention from HarperCollins and they signed with Stevenson to publish Nimona as a graphic novel. As a webcomic, Nimona won State Magazine’s Cartoon Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of the Year in 2012 and, as a graphic novel, it won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album in 2016.
Stevenson continued his work in comics with the series, Lumberjanes, published through BOOM! Studios and work on various Marvel properties. Lumberjanes met with notable success and won Stevenson two more Eisner awards. He would collaborate with the writer, Ryan North, on a choose your own adventure book inspired by the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Eventually, Stevenson would choose the graphic novel format to tell his own story.
As a writer, Stevenson rebooted the intellectual property, She-Ra, with a new animated series, released on Netflix, called She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. The show ran from 2018 to 2020, when it ended with its fifth and final season. During this time, Stevenson married Cartoonist Molly Ostertag and credits the relationship with influencing the relationships in her show.
The year 2020 saw Stevenson open up about his personal life in significant ways. He came out as bigender and transmasculine. Stevenson published his story of self-acceptance and struggling with faith, in Oprah Magazine. His autobiography, The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures, would be released soon after and illustrate the story for anyone interested in hearing about his life for themselves. 2020 would also see Stevenson discuss being bipolar and how living with the condition has been for him, the following year would see him do the same with having ADHD. In 2021, Stevenson had their name legally changed from Noelle to ND, which he uses in professional settings and Nate in personal ones.
Currently, Steven has been putting his efforts into publishing shorter comics online that deal with mental illness and struggles involving acceptance. These works can be found on his Substack and are written with the hope of giving others a place to feel understood and have somewhere to give them hope in hard moments.
Review of Novel:
The graphic novel The Fire Never Goes Out, published in March 2020, is an autobiographical collection of drawings, photos, and musings of the author spanning ten years of his life. It is an inspiring work; meant to show how he discovered his identity and became the renowned and award winning artist he is today.
The novel reads as a series of blog-posts or diary entries, with a series of updates in his personal successes interspersed with short events in his life that helped change him into who he is today.
However, the graphic novel also shows the struggles the author deals with through the many years the novel covers. Within the first few pages, Stevenson has already cast the scene to portray a lonely and depressed young adult struggling with his identity. At the beginning of the novel, he is faced with a fear of death and losing religion. Subconsciously, he also recognizes that his identity is unacceptable to the church, and feels outcast from the people that do believe in a higher power.
Meanwhile, Stevenson is attending college, attempting to earn his bachelors degree in art. Through college, Stevenson narrows his focus from fanfiction and fanart to his own characters within comics, specifically a project started during his senior year, Nimona. Through it all, he continues to struggle with the question of who he is as a person, while battling mental health struggles and fearing failure.
After living in Los Angeles for one summer in 2012, he struggles with the pull to continue his career as a comic writer and illustrator instead of returning to Maryland to finish his degree. He feels as though he had found a place in California, along with the many connections and friends he made through his internship with BOOM! Studios, but is still forced to return to Maryland to complete his degree.
Following his graduation in 2013, Stevenson immediately found work and threw himself into both personal and professional projects, specifically Lumberjanes, work for Marvel Comics, and both Disney and DreamWorks animation studios. However, with so many projects all important to him, his mental health begins to decline, finally forcing him to relinquish projects in order to handle his burnout. This moment is the heart of the graphic novel, because Stevenson must grapple with the fear of failure and his identity as an artist. Readers can identify with Stevenson’s burnout, especially students who also struggle with their mental health, losing religion, and coming to terms with both sexual and gender identity.
In the end, the novel ends with hope - he has found love, he has a successful career, and through all his struggles with identity, Stevenson has discovered the many labels that fully encompass who he is. Writing this memoir is a deeply vulnerable act, and throughout the graphic novel pages, we see who Stevenson sees himself as: a flawed, but still loved and valuable human being, with art and joy to share with others.
Activity:
Socratic Seminar
The instructor will hold a Socratic Seminar following the conclusion of the novel. The students will have their texts available and the questions below (from the Resources section) provided by the instructor as the conversation develops. The instructor should make an effort to encourage all students to participate in some capacity to answer in detail the first five questions, and then progress to a more generalized discussion with the final five questions. The goal of the lesson is to ensure students are able to engage with and understand the text and, in the second half, find valuable ways to build connections with their world. Depending on student feedback, the instructor may find it worthwhile for the students to engage with some of the activities in the final five resources at a later date.
Questions with links for the discussion and also links relevant to understanding the text/author.
Common Core Standards:
Reading Standards for Literature 11-12
Key Ideas and Details
1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
2. Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
3. Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters/archetypes are introduced and developed).
1. How do the images in the book help the readers understand the theme of the book or topics being brought up?
National Book Author Interview
2. Does this being a graphic novel give the story less importance compared to other YA literature?
3. On page 26 there’s a photo being used, what might the author have done instead of drawing it?
What evidence can be used to support the author's main goal or view from the story?
Comics Alliance Author Interview
4. What do the time jumps in years do to the story?
5. What is significant about the title of the story, and why did the author choose it?
6. Journaling is a practice that appears to have provided the author with introspection and perspective. Below is an overview on how to introduce journaling to adolescents. Have you kept a journal before, how has it helped, and why might you have stopped?
7. Burnout is a topic that not only frequently appears in the graphic novel but appears to be a significant part of its foundation. What are some strategies for managing burnout found in the below resource that could be helpful?
8. Below is a brief guide on how to create a time capsule (which can be adapted to all ages). In the “2017 Year in Review” panel, the author has a conversation with his younger self and it appears to provide him encouragement. What things would you like to read in a letter left to you by your younger self?
9. The author mentions that he first began his career as a hobby making short 1-2 page graphic novel panels. Below is a resource that provides templates to create your own comic strip. If the theme is a personal memoir, what would you want to include in your panel?
10. Graphic novel YA memoirs are a relatively small book genre. Below is a link to a curated list of some more recommended graphic novel memoirs. What are some memoirs you would like to see in a graphic novel format and what benefits would the visual format bring to the memoir
Recommended Graphic Novels for Teens
