Super Clea and Keva Marie

BIO

Clea and Keva are creative wonderwomen!

Keva is creator and designer extraordinaire of the infamous Poot! line of clothing. She also created the "Jump on Style" page for teen magazine Jump! and worked as an Art Director at the Lambesis Agency (home of the L–Report) where she created print and web campaigns for Bebe, Fetish, Love’s Baby Soft and countless other national girl–centric campaigns.

Clea came to the project as a teen–junk–store–owner and Super Clea and Keva Marie, having written for magazines such as Details, Transworld’s Warp, Option and countless other newspapers.

Together, Clea and Keva busted traditions and expectations and went on to create two zines (Sweetie and Phoebe) for mega–mall store Wet Seal, and they also created the award-winning Foxy.com (the first girl web site, ever) with the companion magazine FOXY!. They consulted on the creation of magalog Moxie Girl (now MXG) where Clea had a regular column. Clea also created numerous websites on her own, including the original and award–winning Urban Decay site.

Clea and Keva are urrently working on a follow–up to HEY DAY!, and Clea is working with HarperCollins and 17th Street Productions on a series of YA fiction titles under the series name Goddesses, which is scheduled to published in Winter 2002.

INTERVIEW

December 11, 2001

Eliminate the word "bored" from your vocabulary once and for all. How? Read on as Teenreads.com diva Lucy Burns chats with Keva Marie and Super Clea about their new book HEY DAY!, the 'zine biz, and their quest for world-domination!

TRC: Let's start from the beginning. Did you have a diary or a journal as a kid? Did you write bad poetry as a teen (my own personal talent)?

CLEA: No diary. No journal. No bad poetry. Lame huh? I did however Write a plethora (yes, plethora) of wildly detailed notes to my Girlfriends, who then wrote back on the same pieces of paper and then I Saved them. I had boxes of them, categorized and dated. I left them Safely (or so I thought) at home with my Mom, along with my Babies, when I left for college. I believe the second day I was gone, she threw it all out.

KEVA: Oh my gawd? Totally! Diary always. In fact I have boxes and suitcases full of them. Black books. Glitter covered books, books with stickers and books with plain pages, with lines with colored paper, all different sizes and shapes. I would sit in bed every night and write and write. Sometimes about boys, sometimes about life stuff. I would also reread them? like months later. Word by word. I was so frustrated back then and the process of writing whatever came to mind no matter what, it was so liberating and I know it really saved me.

TRC: What was the most heinous book you had to read in college or in high school? What was the best book ever assigned to you? Did you have a particular teacher who encouraged your efforts at writing and creating and being cool?

CLEA: You know I don't remember being asked to read books I didn't want to. But I do remember thinking, "Whoa, where are all the books by women?" I mean all the books we had to read in school were by men! But of those men's books, I loved AS I LAY DYING by Faulkner and INNOCENTS ABROAD by Mark Twain the most. Now, my first year of college was a whole 'nother story. It was then that I read everything (and I mean everything) by Jane Austen and loved every minute of it. It was also there that I had a professor who liked my writing. He told me that I wrote like I was having an informal conversation with the reader, a really good conversation. And it was then I realized good writing didn't have to necessarily be about grammar and sentence structure. It was super encouraging. And then, that same year, I discovered books by people who weren't dead. I mean, in high school you read the "masters" and they're great and all, but what about modern lit. So that same freshman year in college I read people who were still living and saw how many different ways there were to write and how I could speak of my experiences as an 18-year-old and that was okay. Favorite authors of that time: Pagan Kennedy, Francesca Lia Block (super inspiring to me), and Nick Tosches who mostly wrote about music.

KEVA: I remember having to read books that really didn't do much for me, at least at school. I don't even remember them in fact. Outside of school I read lots. Anything and everything I could get my hands on, but not the cool stuff Clea was reading. I just wasn't there yet. I would, however, go to the library a lot and get all kinds of stuff: biographies, romances, and mysteries. My grandma and I would swap mystery novels. I would also get books at the thrift store, kitschy novels from the '60s and poetry books and crafty books. I have so many books I don't have room for any more but I can't stop!

TRC: When did you meet each other? What were you doing? Did you instantly know "This girl is my super best bud and she and I will go on to create a wonderful book together?"

CLEA: Keva had this awesome clothing line called POOT. And it was run out of the same building that housed Skateboard.com. I was hired by them to write about music. And POOT! had this website (and a black and white 'zine) called FOXY. But the website was only like 4 pages deep. So at first, in my spare time I did stuff for FOXY.com. Then my boss said I could work on that, and the 'zine, which we made color, pretty much like 50% of the time. So Keva and I started hanging out after hours talking about what we wanted to write about, what girls we could sucker into writing cool junk, cutting out inspiration pictures and making crayon drawings that I scanned until the wee hours of the night.

KEVA: When I first met Clea all I saw was hair, dark curly crazy hair. Then I saw her funny colorful clothes and her funky Jeepster and her wacky store and I thought, "My gawd this girl is so way cool and I'm a big dork and she knows all the cool people, cool bands, clubs all that" and I, well I just worked all the time. But then we would talk and plan stuff and even though there was so much other work to do, those early times of concepting with Clea were so great. I mean you know when you have your own ideas and then unless you say them out loud or to someone else sometimes they slip away? Brainstorming with Clea was like speaking a dream out loud and then knowing that between the two of us we could make it happen. It's still like that today, but better. Soooo sooo much better!

TRC: How and when did you decide to write a 'zine? Was there any grrrl 'zine out there that was an inspiration to you? How do you feel about being a girl in the 'zine world which has tended to be boy dominated?

CLEA: Never thought once about being a girl in a male dominated thingmabob. In skateboarding, there were always boys around. Dirty ones. But mostly it was the girls who were working their butts off. The old SASSY had been an inspiration to me. But at the time, there wasn't much in the way of girl 'zines. BUST was out and that was cool, but it was for the older girl.

KEVA: I didn't think. There wasn't time. POOT! was rocking and I was in love with it all. Fans were writing in and their letters were amazing. There had to be something to give back, so FOXY was born. Thank gawd Clea came on board though and busted it out. Those late night dates with the paper, scissors, tape, glue, and Xerox machine were getting out of hand!

TRC: Where did the impetus to write HEY, DAY! come from? What do you want the reader to come away with after reading HEY, DAY!?

CLEA: I wanted a NO-BOREDOM book. Something that you could pick up and just look at or interact with or that would inspire you when you're bored so you won't be bored no more. I remember when I was younger wanting something like this but not knowing was this was. It took me awhile to figure out what "this" was but with the help of one Miss Keva Marie, we did.

KEVA: Inspiration. If nothing else, I just want to inspire other girls to just take charge and do stuff.

TRC: How did you go about getting the book published? Did you encounter initial rejection?

CLEA: Well, I was super naive and it worked in our favor! I made a packet of some of the clips of things Keva and I had done. I wrote up a proposal for this very book with Keva's help. And I mailed it to a few publishers who did books I liked. We heard back from everyone and in fact had three publishers that were interested. But I loved Harper from day one. Our original editor, Ginee, rocked the house. And besides, they had published my hero, Francesca Lia Block.

KEVA: Clea totally rocked this and thank gawd. I was working as an art director for an advertising agency at the time and would like be there till 3 am. Then I got pneumonia and was in bed for weeks. By the way Clea, thank you!

CLEA: You're welcome!

TRC: Why did you decide to do HEY, DAY! in a tip-per-day kind of way? And why make it look the way it does? Who did what in the planning stages?

CLEA: Actually it was the aforementioned rocking Ginee that came up with the tip-per-day format. It looks like it does because Keva and I made every page different. We drew every picture, shot every bad snapshot. It looks a lot like FOXY did. As for stages, well, we wrote a lot of the essays separate and many of them together. Then we'd swap them so we could each read 'em and put thoughts into each other's ideas. After we were done writing the thing, we got to designing it and whoa, that took like eons. I mean, page by page, we just went like energizer bunnies on our iMACs. Keva can tell you about all the SNAX and TV.

KEVA: We made it looks the way it looked because we are both very random and crafty and we didn't want a glossy polished feel. We wanted it to feel tangible to girls and not too cool, because were not. We wanted it to feel just like it is: handcrafted. Yeah, it's kind of nuts and not perfect and, well, so what, we like it and maybe it will inspire girls to see that they could do something like it too, ya know? SNAX? Mmm I'm hungry! SNAX is a book that Clea and I want to do that for same reason --- no one else likes it except us.

TRC: If we looked on your night table, what book would we find?

CLEA: Oh my is this embarrassing? The fourth Harry Potter book! Sorry, but I really like 'em. Also, I am reading ANGUS, THONGS AND FULL FRONTAL SNOGGING by Louise Rennison. Super cute book. And I just finished the wonderful SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS by the lovely Ann Brashares. All YA (or young junk)!

KEVA: Beauty products, eye masks (like 5 different kinds), journal with pink pen stuck inside, alarm clock, massager thing for late night headaches and the latest issue of Real Simple, my latest and most favorite magazine! Oh and a really strange picture of me n' my honey.

TRC: What authors were your favorites when you were a teen? What current YA authors do you admire?

CLEA: Loved STARGIRL by Jerry Spinelli. Love everything by Francesca (but I already mentioned that didn't I?) I mean the WEETZIE BAT Books are truly the most wonderful wonderfullest books. Oh they make me shiver in a good way. The Lemony Snicket books are cool. Are they really YA though? They're young, but so cool. And the aforementioned books like SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS and ANGUS, THONGS AND FULL FRONTAL SNOGGING. For a heavier read, I enjoyed THE SASKIAD by Brian Hall. Oh and I really liked THE BASIC EIGHT. Man, who wrote that? Oh I cannot remember!

KEVA: Francesca! Mostly coz I never knew about her until I met Clea so my joy for Francesca is wrapped up in my admiration for Clea and it makes one big happy feeling. Also because she just takes you to another place, without even trying your there. I also loved THE SECRET HISTORY and am so ready for her follow up. Hurry!

TRC: What's next on your agenda, besides world domination?

CLEA: Why, world domination is the correct answer. Hey Keva, tell 'em about the MATRIX (not the movie).

KEVA: No problem. You see the matrix (you have to make this hand swoosh like movement when you say it, ok) is our master plan. The thing about me n' Clea is that we always like to think in themes. We think of our approach to things as a way of life. So that's why we developed the matrix: to encapsulate all the things we want to do. You see it's not just "HEY, DAY!" the book, it's HEY, DAY! the card series, the pens, the web site, the note cards, the TV show, the diary, the tees, the stickers and on and on.

For more info on the HEY, DAY!, go to: http://www.heydaygirls.com

   --- Lucy Burns


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