We were lucky to catch up with Gabriella Shlyakh recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Gabriella thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

When I was in Elementary School, I used to staple printer paper together, and draw up these little comics to slip into the Reading Nook. Initially it was kind just an experiment to see if anyone would read through them–but eventually the “Cat Gurlz” (yes, very Y2K), gained a small following in class, and kids started to ask for more comics. I realized that you could bring joy with something as small and personal as stories, and something kind of clicked inside me after that. A few years later I started to ask for my own personal marble notebooks. They weren’t for class, and didn’t have anything to do with keeping notes or bringing back homework–this was a space that I could fill and explore for myself.

After that it was all I could do to grab extra time to write! Decades later when I moved to Los Angeles, I met animators, and they made me realize that I could marry stories and art to create something even bigger and more ambitious than what I’d been doing on my own. I don’t think I’ve looked back since!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For a long time I told people that I made stories for Misanthropes, but the older I get, the more I realize that the stories I wanted to tell had more to do with people who found themselves at odds with a status quo that neither understood them, nor had them as part of the equation.

My stories are all over the place in terms of genre–since I tend to straddle both Fiction and Sci-Fi. The heart of all those stories, however, always centers on people moving against the current, and illustrating how the world treats those people when they live by that truth.

In 2022, I completed my first novel, Tiger, Tutor, Delivery Girl–which is a cyberpunk thriller set in Los Angeles that I wrote while in lockdown.

Right now, I’m currently working on both a sequel to Tiger, Tutor as well as a fictional love letter to my hometown of Staten Island, NY. That project is currently a serialized fiction project that’s being posted as I go, so that’s been great fun to experiment and learn, and be accepting & flexible with the decisions I’ve made in the creative process.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I try to be very careful about what narratives I tell myself now! As an artist in my 30s, especially one who moved to LA to tackle the Entertainment Industry–you buy into a lot of narratives that sometimes are not true: for instance–that it’s too late to pursue your dreams; or an even bigger lesson I needed to unlearn: “That skill isn’t for me. I’m not capable of doing it, and should leave that to the masters.”

The truth is, nothing is “not for you” if you’re learning genuinely and respectfully. It’s never too late to learn a new skill that you think could take your other craft to the next level. I told myself that I couldn’t draw worth a damn for a long time after coming to LA–being surrounded by so many phenomenal creators, all so much better it than me. But the thing was–that should have never killed my desire to keep drawing and improving, even if I wasn’t destined to be the best artist in the world. After spending some time on my art, & re-learning the basics, I realized that this was the exact skill I needed to help build my own storyboards and pitch bibles.

Skills snowball, as does knowledge, and every time you say “why not”, and teach yourself something new–you’re opening up your world.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

More than anything else, we need to find a way to feasibly separate how ‘monetarily valuable’ art is, from how valuable it is to humans.

Allowing artists to explore themselves, *in addition to* exploring what could support them, is integral in telling the stories you actually want to tell–instead of consistently putting time & effort into being marketable. This is a draining dynamic that I would love to see more mutual aid programs & communities addressing.

I’m hopeful though! Things are starting to shift, little by little. The end of the strikes have shown us that collective bargaining and social pressure IS effective, and the fact that so many creators came together for the Entertainment Strike Fund really showed me that we really could side-step this current studio monopoly if we put our heads together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yeahyankee.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yeahyankee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellashlyakh
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChXS2tfhKMC8P0s6fqv-CxQ
• Other: Tiger, Tutor, Delivery Girl on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Tutor-Delivery-Gabriella-Shlyakh/dp/B0B14BCWN1

Image Credits
All Images & Artwork by Gabriella Shlyakh