Mass shootings in the United States happen frequently enough that they have become horrifyingly rote. News of the latest tragedy often lands as a weary nation has only begun to shake off the fresh horror of the incident that came before. In her debut graphic memoir, Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting (Little, Brown; Oct. 11), author/illustrator Kindra Neely plumbs the awfulness and dreadful monotony of these massacres through her own experience as a survivor of the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, where Neely was then a 19-year-old student. In a book that “will resonate with far too many,” according to our review, Neely conveys her struggle to cope with the incident, and its psychologically grueling aftermath, with honesty, self-awareness, and hope. The author spoke to us via Zoom from her home in Salem, Oregon; the conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

In the book, you include frank depictions of your struggle with mental health as a result of the shooting and subsequent events. How did you decide how much of that to include, and was it scary to make that so public?

It was very, very scary to make that public. I talk a little bit about it in the book, but previously I was very much a person who kept my feelings to myself, so putting that out in public was a big step and a decision that I’m very proud of. I thought that it was important to include frank discussions of how I was struggling mentally and the effects that had on my friendships, on my body, and on everything, because I wish I’d had those kinds of conversations about some of the very difficult mental health issues that come from traumatic events like these.

When you say that it’s a step you knew you needed to take, did you think of it primarily as something you had to do for yourself or for your audience? Or was it a bit of both?

A little bit of both. It was a big step on my personal journey, but it was also something I definitely felt I needed to do for the audience.

Having lived through an active shooter incident, what’s something about the experience that might surprise someone who hasn’t gone through it?

I’ve had friends and family members be very surprised when I say that I think about the shooting almost every day. While that has lessened as I’ve gotten in a much better mental space, I just don’t think that people realize how much that permeates your life and your thought. I remember going to classes at [the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia], and I would get so many compliments from teachers being like, you’re so attentive, you’re very quiet and you pay attention. They don’t know that I’m sitting there being like, OK, if a shooter was to come in the room right now, which table am I going to flip over? How can I even get out of this room? I would have those thoughts and those scenarios running through my mind every single day, every time I stepped into a classroom. I’ve had people tell me that they’re surprised to hear that, especially as years have gone by since the shooting.

What suggestions do you have for readers who are inspired to help fight gun violence—especially for readers who might want to help but fear the issue will never get better?

I think that’s how the general public feels about the issue: It’s not going to get better, that they can’t do things to help make it better. I don’t want to flood people with this sense of optimism that things can get better as soon as we do A through B or whatever, but there are things that you can do. It depends on what you’re able to do individually. Some people might find that they are better at going to protests and being on those very physical front lines of enacting change or being involved in programs that help people that have been through gun violence.

I think people take school shootings specifically and put them in their own box [and think of them as] this enigma that happens off to the side. Really, it is a matter of, frankly, White supremacy. I do see that mass shootings and school shootings are linked to [White supremacy]. Depending on the reader, that will be where you have to start making decisions about what you can do to help; for a lot of White people, that’s going to be reflecting and working to combat that kind of ideology.

Were there storytellers and/or artists who inspired you as you were creating the memoir?

I’m fairly new to the world of comic books, so I had a lot of fun getting to read lots of memoir or memoir-adjacent stories. I loved Tillie Walden’s Spinning; it made me feel like I could definitely do this book, and the monochromatic purple splash-art illustration in the back of [my] book was very much inspired by [Walden’s book] specifically.

Have you taken a break from creating since you finished the book, or have you still been making art?

I’ve been making art—it’s not necessarily been comic art—but I have been taking a bit of a break; I was so happy finishing the book and [with] the amount of personal healing that I had through that. There was a moment when it was done where I was like, I definitely want to keep doing comics. But this is the first time since the shooting has happened that this doesn’t affect every single aspect of my being every single day, and I want to enjoy just being a 26-year-old for a little bit.

Have any reactions to the book surprised you?

I gave an advance copy to my friend Jasmine, who’s in the book. She had a friend that at the time was going through some legal stuff with a past partner, I think, and who was afraid to give her testimony in court. When I wrote the book, I thought that this would be good for people that had been in shootings, hopefully, and I didn’t really think beyond that. And Jasmine gave her the book, she read through it, and then she basically pulled an all-nighter working on her stuff for the court. She felt like, Well, this person did this. I can do it, too, and it is important to speak up about what I’m going through. That was a little bit of a surprise, just because I hadn’t really thought about it outside [the context] of shootings.

Do you think that you’ll write another book, and do you have an idea of what you might like to write about?

I hope to have a long career in comics and graphic novels. I have thought about doing another memoir-style book and talk about growing up queer in the South and in a heavily Christian community. I might write that book one day, but I think I might take a break from writing about such immediately serious topics. I’d love to write books for younger kids about them going on fun and fantastic adventures. It would be awesome to just kind of have my own original characters and my own world to do things with.

Nina Palattella is the editorial assistant.