![]() Drag queens are the only people in the world who haven’t.”Īfter years of workshopping, revising, and getting rejected by publishers, the book, Big Wig, about a small child who dresses in drag as “BB Bedazzle” as part of a neighborhood talent competition, was published by a Simon and Schuster imprint last February. “To me, the ethos of drag is so similar to the experience of playing dress-up and donning this character so much bigger than you, and finding power in your imagination,” he says. Though he does not perform in drag himself, he had attended a lot of drag shows and was a big Ru Paul’s Drag Race fan, and he had the idea to write a book featuring a magical wig, as a way of exploring the fun and imagination of the drag community. “It made me feel bigger,” he recalls.įast-forward to 2018, when Hillman was brainstorming ideas for children’s books at his MFA program. Like many queer kids, he was often bullied, so dress-up and performance were a kind of refuge for him. ![]() ![]() When Jonathan Hillman was growing up in rural Wisconsin, he says he frequently felt “small.” He was a boy in a family of dirt track racers who played with Barbies, who would pull his turtleneck up over his head to make a pretend wig when he was playing with the kid down the street. ![]()
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