An Interview with Gabe Montesanti

Gabe Montesanti’s Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors chronicles the author’s emergence into drag culture and her evolution into an unclassifiable, genderfluid “drag thing.”

Through experimentation and performance, Montesanti confronts binary ideas about gender conformity while navigating strained relationships and personal challenges. Her search for community, stage presence, and self often butts up against–and sometimes feeds off of–a more private battle with the mania of bipolar disorder. Throughout the memoir, Montesanti accentuates her captivating storytelling with illustrations to further explore notions about multiplicity, gender performance, and mental health. This hybrid format creates an immersive experience that compels the reader to engage deeply with both the prose and the drawings, emphasizing moments that convey the memoir’s themes of duality, transformation, acceptance, and self-invention. Set against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile American Midwest, Drag Thing is an unflinching exploration of what it takes to finally see oneself.

Jackie Martin: In Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors, you write from your perspective at the intersection of queerness, drag culture, and mental illness, including your experiences with bipolar disorder. Why was it important to tackle both your diagnosis and your journey to discovering your drag persona in this memoir? In what ways are the two interconnected? 

First, thank you so much for these questions, Jackie. I appreciate the chance to be read so deeply.  The intersection of my drag persona and bipolar disorder is inextricably linked in my memoir, Drag Thing. Bipolar disorder, and mania in particular, is often misunderstood. I reference some of the books I was reading about bipolar disorder in Drag Thing, and I’ll quote one of those here, which is Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, by the psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison. Essentially it posits that there is a link between the manic-depressive brain and the mind of an artist through examples like Virigina Woolf, Lord Byron, and van Gogh. Jamison writes, “Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and— most germane to our argument here—sharpened and unusually creative thinking and increased productivity?” Essentially, my drag persona Fender Bender, became the manifestation of those characteristics—of mania itself. I couldn’t write about one without writing about the other.

JM: I loved the inclusion of illustrations alongside the text, especially as the experimental, hybrid format of the memoir seems to echo the exploratory and fluid nature of gender which you explore in this memoir. What made you decide to include graphic storytelling in your book? How does the graphic format lend itself to the subjects you’re writing about? 

Unlike my first book, Brace for Impact, I was sketching and painting images that detailed my immersion into the subculture of drag as soon as I started doing it. Drag Thing is a book about art, self-expression, and self-invention. For that reason, I knew graphics needed to accompany the text. It’s about multiplicities and intersections: being two things at once. Writing and drawing (and performing, for that matter) are all vastly different mediums that allow me to express myself in unique ways. Unlike writing, my visual art doesn’t have to declare what anything means or even wager a guess. It allows the viewer to linger with me from the inside. It depicts realities that some might turn away from, just like the subjects I write about in Drag Thing: my body hair, my roommate’s testosterone shots in the psych ward, fresh top surgery scars. Drag is also a medium that combines many elements, including the visual, so I am so glad I have the experience of putting a hybrid book into the world. 

JM: Your drawings of people include elements of duality, specifically in the facial structures: two noses, two mouths, often facing different directions. This struck me as a statement about what you note are “the duplicities…that are a keystone of bipolar disorder and drag.” Can you speak a bit about your creative process behind drawing these two-faced characters? What does it mean to you that each has only one set of eyes? 

Over lockdown, I did a virtual artist group with some of my roller derby friends, and we read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If you’re not familiar with it, at the end of every chapter there are suggested “dates” you can take yourself on, challenges you can try. I had done visual essays in grad school, but I started drawing almost every day as part of the Artist’s Way and my figures started morphing as I got more comfortable with myself and my highs and lows. I stopped counting how many fingers were on each hand. I didn’t start each sketch with pencil—I boldly penned them directly with permanent ink. All my choices felt more authentic. In Drag Thing, figures with two pairs of facial elements are fitting because of the duality of bipolar disorder and the gender binary that I was breaking by being a “drag thing,” but it’s also just the looser, less realistic style I established as an outsider artist. As for the single pair of eyes? Two pairs simply won’t fit on a single face!  

JM: You write with such honesty and vulnerability about the various ways bipolar disorder has impacted you, both in your personal life and as a performer. How did you determine which of these stories to share in the memoir, and which to leave out? 

Immersion nonfiction is wild because when you go in knowing you want to write about one specific thing, in my case, my entrance into St. Louis drag as an AFAB person, there’s no way of knowing what will happen in the world or in your personal life that could be relevant to the story. I truly didn’t know how much bipolar disorder would play a role, or the threat of violence and oppression to our community. One thing that helps is that I have a very meticulous way of taking notes. I keep a journal every day, and I also took detailed notes the morning after every drag show I performed in or attended. If I thought something might be relevant, I made an entry. I took notes after having conversations with people that I knew would be crucial to the memoir, and sometimes I asked people if I could actually transcribe our discussion as we were talking. (One example is the drag king who taught me to paint my face, Andy Whorehal, which turned out to be an entire chapter.) I always want to get the dialogue as close to authentic as possible. Ultimately, I went through my journal, drag Word files, and interview files, and wrote what the subject of each topic was on an index card. Then, I ordered the hundreds of index cards on my floor. I determined my main themes and started to see the arc emerge. Then, I started pulling cards like weeds. It became clear if there were events I needed to add from memory once I started pulling cards. What I left out—and it was a lot—either felt unprocessed, too private, or extraneous to the narrative. I left in what I thought could do the most work the most efficiently.

JM: As much as this book is about self-realization and self-invention, it’s also about the importance of community and seeing yourself reflected in others. What would you say to people who may be searching for a community in which they can feel safe and free in their identities? 

The communities I’ve found throughout my life evolve with my changing needs and desires. What worked for me at age nine or 20 as a competitive swimmer certainly didn’t work for me at 22 as an openly queer roller derby skater, or at 27 when I started exploring drag and gender. I’ve found community in surprising places (I was recruited for roller derby in a coffee shop in small town Ohio) that satisfies certain components of my identity, but sometimes other parts are more difficult. I’ve spoken to a lot of people living with bipolar disorder who have to remain discreet about the diagnosis for several reasons, or simply choose to, and even though I am open about my intense struggle with bipolar and have tried support groups at various times, I have never really found what I’m looking for. The most seen and supported I feel in my bipolarity is in literature rather than something I’ve joined. I think that can be true of a lot of identities. I also think the term “community” is used so frequently it can sometimes conjure a very specific meaning that can be a detriment to those seeking the benefits. It doesn’t have to be something that would belong at a table at the local Pride parade or in a secret Facebook group. It can be something you invent yourself.

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Gabe Montesanti, (she/they) is a queer writer and artist who resides in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of Brace for Impact: A Memoir (2022), which chronicles her time skating for Arch Rival Roller Derby, and Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors (2026). Gabe has been a competitive swimmer, a drag artist, and an educator. She was raised in the working-class

Midwest.

Jackie Martin is an educator and writer from the Boston area. Her work has been published by Jabberwocky, New Pages, Heuer Publishing, Smith & Kraus, Applause Books, YouthPLAYS, and Pioneer Drama. Jackie is currently a graduate student pursuing her MA in English at Bridgewater State University. When she is not reading, writing, grading, or planning, she delights in spending time with her husband, two children, and cats.