Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell is a local cartoonist and illustrator whose work you may have seen in The New Yorker or at our annual Greenpointers Holiday Market.
Her latest release, The Joy of Snacking, traces a lifetime of eating. More than just a running list of food, the memoir grapples with food in all its emotional connotations. In advance of the book’s release on October 7, we spoke to Campbell about her favorite neighborhood snacks, her love of burlesque, and why Kid Cuisine is actually terrible.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
We spoke years ago, shortly after the release of Murder Book, and now we’re talking about snacking. A bit of a thematic leap! How did you get to that idea?
It actually started as a comic I drew for this place called Electric Lit, and that comic…came out during COVID, and it was called “I’m not a foodie, but I’m not a bad person.” I was in a relationship for a long time where my ex was, like, really into food, [it] was a huge part of his identity, and I wasn’t, and it came out in a lot of interesting and also difficult ways in our relationship. It was a difficult point between us because I did not share in his joy of cooking. I just wouldn’t get that excited about stuff because I snack. I live on snacks. That was my identity, but it became like a very interesting playing ground for why he was the way he was, and why I was the way I was.
I ended up writing this first comic, and at the time, I didn’t foresee how emotional it was going to become for me. Which now I look at, and that was totally naive of me; I opened up a can of worms and can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. I wrote that comic, and it was like, I had so much more I needed to say, and I think when you set out to write, and for me, draw a book, I don’t want to get into it unless I can talk about it for two weeks to you. You can’t write a book on a subject if you can only talk about it for an hour. But if you can keep talking and keep talking and keep talking, and still feel like, ‘Oh my god, I have so much to say, there’s so many ideas’…[then] I think I have to turn this thing into a book.
I talked to my agent about it, and she said for me to put the pitch deck together. On a separate note, there are many times I had drawn in my sketchbook a little book that was called “The Joy of Snacking” instead of The Joy of Cooking. I had drawn that a lot as a joke to myself but then [I felt like], I think that’s what it is. Of course being in New York, too, foodie culture is extremely celebrated. The cooking, and the restaurant scene, and the New York Times recipes, and everything, and I’m so not interested. It was just a very rich area for me to talk about, of feeling alienated in that.
When I sold the book, I still was thinking, ‘It’ll be a lot sillier, there’s no way it’ll be as long as Murder Book,’ …and then I started actually writing the book and then so much trauma came out. I’m deeply proud of it, I feel it’s my best work that I’ve ever done. I scratched the surface of something, and just realized I had this really intense narrative for me to get through. It was really hard to draw this book because it was really painful, but I finally was able to talk about how I had suffered from an eating disorder for so long, but not in this big way where, I feel like in film and television and books and everything, when you see an eating disorder depicted, it’s always in this really extreme format, where there’s an anorexic girl that’s in the hospital and is hanging on by a thread or somebody’s rail thin, but I have had this really quiet eating disorder that no one noticed, because I was not that thin. It just went undetected for a long time, and I think that actually is, of course, the most common type of eating disorder—it’s the one that’s hiding in a corner. It just became this whole book about recovering from that, and my relationship with my body.
In the process of writing, did you uncover any old favorite snacks, or things that made you say “Oh god, I can’t believe I used to eat that!”
Oh for sure.
The book is structured by story and then there’s a recipe. There’s all these recipes in the book for snacks I’ve eaten throughout my life. One, not rediscovered because I still totally love eating this, I’ve never seen anyone else do this because it sounds so weird, but I was obsessed with salami and cream cheese. And because I ate so little, so if I ate anything, my mom was like ‘Oh my God, that’s really exciting, you can have that constantly.’ She’d basically make little tacos of a little piece of cream cheese and the salami folded up. Sounds weird, but it’s so good.
The college years are, like, shit you would eat in college in the middle of the night. I would pour chocolate chips into a jar of peanut butter.
There’s something so special about snacks that are so specific to a time and place in your life, where even if you revisit them, it’s not serving the same function as it did at that time in your life.
While I was writing this book, my boyfriend found one of those TV dinners.
Kid Cuisine?
Yes! We sat and ate it, and it was so horrible. With the microwave brownie?
And there was a rainbow pudding or something?
Yes! And it’s so bad, and we were laughing really hard. Because I can still be sort of a trash diet lady, and he was like ‘I’m surprised that you don’t like it.’ It’s vile! But I did revisit that.
The book also details your journey into burlesque. Can you walk us through how that all unfolded?
When I was young, all I did was watch showtunes. I just loved big musicals, and all the showgirls in the musicals, like Singin’ in the Rain, everything Judy Garland did. I love the costuming, and I was particularly obsessed with the musical Gypsy. Caveat — I was the youngest of four, there was no “Hilary can’t watch that.” I saw it all.
I loved those stories and the music and everything with it, and I grew up dancing. I mostly was a tap dancer until I was 18 or so. So I was always performing in some capacity. I had a fantasy about myself. I recently found a little note I made in, like, 1997 or 1998, and it says my dreams. And the first one is to be a cartoonist. The second is that I wanted to be a Rockette. Throughout college, I wasn’t doing that kind of stuff really, but I was always dancing. Most dinners at my parents house ended in a dance party; that’s just kind of our normal family thing. There was always so much dance in my life. And as I got older, I still just was obsessed with showgirls and just loved the whole concept behind it, but I never really thought that I could actually do it.
I moved to New York ten years ago, and slowly started to see more of that around me, that you could do something like this. But I still was in an emotional space of actively hating my body and really just a lot of self-hate there. And as I was coming out of my shell, and having gotten into The New Yorker, and was becoming a happier and more confident person, I went to the Slipper Room one night and was just like ‘Oh my god.’ That is everything I ever wanted, and it was so magical and cool and beautiful. And that sat with me for a long time. It was actually my ex who took me there. We had a really complicated up and down relationship. There were really beautiful parts to it and some big issues between us.
When I got out of that relationship, I just felt this freedom to go do what I want with my body. I signed up with the New York School of Burlesque and took an eight week course that ended up in a show, and it was the most liberating, incredible, fabulous experience of my life. It just felt like everything had culminated in one night of self-love. And being like, I am naked on this stage, and I feel fabulous. I’m doing what I want to do, and it’s ok. And my family was supportive, it wasn’t like I had to keep this a secret. I was just so excited to be doing this thing that I thought about for a really long time. It was incredibly liberating.
Do you have any favorite Greenpoint snacks, or ones that helped fuel the making of the book?
I absolutely do. I love the vegan chocolate cookie at Paloma (locations at 772 Manhattan Ave., 163 Nassau Ave.) That cookie is like heaven. It’s always like ‘How is it vegan?’ At Temkin’s (155 Greenpoint Ave.), you can get a classic sour cream and onion dip with potato chips with your drink. It slaps. It makes you feel like you’re at a backyard barbecue. I love toast. No one’s ever served breakfast in a size that I want, because I like to eat like twenty meals a day. I want a little thing and a little thing and a little thing, and then I’m never not eating. At Bakeri (105 Freeman St.), you can just get a slice of sourdough with butter. I’m giving you the most simple things but this is who I am.
One other thing is happy hour at Chez Ma Tante (90 Calyer St.). You can get a mini martini with their French fries, and I think that’s obviously an ideal situation.
Tell us a little more about your book event on October 7!
I’m glad to be partnering with WORD (126 Franklin St.) again on my book event. They were wonderful with Murder Book. If you pre-order from WORD, you’ll get a sticker sheet, and the book will be signed. The day the book is published, I’ll be at WORD signing books.
That night, WORD is helping me out at the Slipper Room for the book launch party. I’m so excited about the line up. My friends are all coming out to support. Kate Micucci will be performing, Cat Cohen, Jeff Hiller, Scout Durwood, Sam Ruddy, there’s gonna be a band as well. Kelsey Lawrence is doing a reading, and I’ll be performing as well.
I’m so stoked, I feel like I’m planning my wedding.
Anything else you’d like to add?
In general, I’m always drawing Greenpoint. If you want to read weekly comics, everything’s on my Substack.
I can’t believe the book is coming out. I’ve learned a lot about myself. I didn’t know what I was walking into. I just opened up this huge thing inside me, and it was really healing. I really hope that the book can get in the hands of some young person that doesn’t know how much the world’s hurting them, hoping that I can reach that audience, and let them know that you don’t have to let the world tell you how you’re supposed to look.
The Joy of Snacking comes out on October 7. You can pre-order it at WORD.
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