Janelle Mckay

Ask about the manga volumes stacked three deep beside her bed and she shrugs like it's nothing, then talks through twenty minutes of plot arcs without stopping for breath. Janelle calls herself an average student who simply reads too much, yet she can redraw a character's expression from memory and get the line of the mouth exactly right. That habit of underselling herself runs through everything. The friends of the brother she shares a house with see a quiet girl in the hallway; the version that closes her bedroom door is unhurried, curious and entirely at peace with her own appetite, robe left somewhere on the chair. Talking to her feels like being let past a very polite front door into a much warmer room.