Author Interview: Someday Perfect by Kat Schneider

There is something quietly devastating about growing up inside a world that has already decided who you are supposed to be. Someday Perfect by Kat Schneider follows Meg, a pastor’s kid navigating two weeks at a strict Christian sleepaway camp where first love arrives uninvited and faith starts asking harder questions than anyone around her is willing to answer. Kat drew from her own childhood to build this one, and you can feel it on every page. We checked in with Kat as her debut launched into the world – check it out below!

Someday Perfect: (A Graphic Novel)

by Kat Schneider
Published by: Random House Graphic
on April 21, 2026
Genres: Contemporary, Graphic Novel, Young Adult
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In this beautiful graphic novel, a teen is tested when she falls for another camper at a Christian sleepaway camp, sparking feelings she was taught to suppress. As she grapples with the rigid expectations of her faith, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery that challenges her deepest beliefs.

Summer camp is supposed to be a place to find yourself, but when you're sent to a Christian sleepaway camp, that can be hard to do. Hemmed in by how she presents herself at school, and the expectations of her pastor father, Meg finds it hard to know just how she feels about herself... let alone how others feel about her.

When Meg runs into Danny, a soft and charming boy who also comes to the camp every summer, her feelings start to flourish. Unfortunately, with these feelings come questions. How is she supposed to fulfill the role she is supposed to play when her heart and her faith are both questioning?

This gorgeously illustrated graphic novel speaks to complexity of faith, while also exploring the power of first loves and the complicated feelings they can bring.

Interview with Kat Schneider

Meg’s time at a Christian sleepaway camp sees her really diving into questions of identity and faith. Were there personal experiences or moments that inspired you to explore this setting and theme?

Oh, absolutely! The idea for Someday Perfect was originally pitched to my publisher as an autobiography. I’m a pastor’s kid who lived in an insulated Christian bubble up until high school, and I would spend my summers at a strict sleepaway camp that felt like it was fifty years behind the rest of the world.

That being said, I realized that my memories were not nearly clear enough to confidently present as factual, so I decided to turn Someday Perfect into a fictional story. Although the narrative and characters are completely made up, the emotional heart of the story is taken directly from my own personal experience as a teenager.

Graphic novels combine text and visuals in a powerful way. How did your process of illustrating emotional moments, like Meg’s first crush, differ from writing those scenes?

I wrote the manuscript for Someday Perfect as though it was a screenplay, so in a sense I was playing the story as a movie in my head before jotting down each moment’s dialogue or action. That being said, the screenplay version of the story was often much more descriptive than what I was actually able to draw. The graphic novel would be twice as long if I had drawn out each sentence that I wrote! Plus the pacing would’ve been way off, for sure. But writing out such detailed scene descriptions helped remind me what I was initially visualizing and feeling during the writing process.

For the specific instances of Meg thinking about and talking to her crush, I would usually write out what she was feeling in the script, such as: “Meg battles between feelings of elated hope and her desire to be perceived as calm and collected. She ends up feeling defeated — her thought cycle spirals her into feeling guilty about being so quick to be excited about seeing a boy.” This particular section of script translated to a full page of comic panels showing Meg flipping between emotions, but often a whole paragraph of script can translate into a single panel. I try to be intuitive about it.

The book blends coming-of-age, first love, and faith, all explored in a summer camp setting. If you could sum up what you hope readers take away from the story, what would that be?

It’s never my intention to sway readers’ beliefs one way or another, but it’s my hope that they can approach their own journey of self-discovery without fear or anxiety, no matter their background or how they were raised.