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EP. 111 Jerome & Jarrett Pumphrey on writing journey, fatherhood and books!
12 Plays3 years ago
Jarrett has been a storyteller most his life, both on his own and in collaboration with Jerome. While their earliest work remains locked in a drawer—the key long lost for good measure—their first co-authored book, Creepy Things Are Scaring Me, was published by HarperCollins in 2003.
Jerome is a designer, illustrator, and writer, originally from Houston, TX. He studied graphic design at the Art Institute of Austin and has worked as a technical writer, freelance graphic designer, and illustrator.
Together the brothers talk about growing up with influential parents, and 4 brothers. A busy house, made with a lot of love. We take a deep dive into fatherhood, and family traditions they try to continue now that they have their own families. And of course, we find out who is the favorite brother, and up and coming projects!
Website: https://thepumphreybrothers.com/
Jarrett:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wjpumphrey/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wjpumphrey
Jerome
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jpumphrey/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jpumphrey
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Transcript
Influence of Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:00:00
Speaker
Funny story, our dad, you know, if I've got sort of an entrepreneurial sort of spirit or bone in my body, it probably came from him. He was very entrepreneurial. He is very entrepreneurial. He's a man of big ideas. And like I said, there were four of us and he had this idea. We were all into music growing up. We all played music. Well, three of the four brothers.
00:00:27
Speaker
We're in the music. We tried to get our youngest brother into it so he could be a part of our band. And he didn't really take to it, but. Didn't work out? No. Our dad, our dad.
Introduction of Authors
00:00:48
Speaker
I'm Disha Filia, and I'm the author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
00:00:54
Speaker
a collection of nine stories about black women, sex, and the black church. My name is Jerry Kraft. I'm the author and the illustrator of the graphic novels, New Kid and Class Act. My name is Anne Winter and I am an author of children's books. I live in Austin, Texas.
00:01:14
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Gary, so much for having me on. This is a huge pleasure. My name is Andre Fenton. I'm a young adult, author, and poet, spoken word artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hi, Gary. Thank you so much. I am Andrea Wang. I write books for kids and most recently my picture book, Watercress, and my debut middle grade novel, The Many Minutes in the World.
00:01:45
Speaker
It's personal. Awesome.
Collaborative Process in Writing
00:01:55
Speaker
All right. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of It's Personal. I'm super excited for my guests today. Guests, plural, today. This is one of the, I think it's the second time I've had two people on at the same time. I'll allow you both to introduce yourself. All right. Yeah, I'm Jared Pumphrey. I'm a children's book author.
00:02:14
Speaker
I make books with my brother Jerome. Yes, and I'm Jerome Pumphrey. And I am, right now I'm an author, illustrator. As Jared said, we write books together. He's also an illustrator, he didn't say. So we both write words and we both illustrate the books. And yeah, I would also say my background, you know, if you might see this on the books as I'm a graphic designer or an art director. And I used to do that until about three months ago. And now I'm just full time working on the books. Wow. And I guess my first question is like, I've always had for you guys, it's just like, what?
00:02:44
Speaker
How does this happen in regards to the art, in regards to the writing and beyond that
Backgrounds and Ventures
00:02:52
Speaker
stuff? Like I've heard about you for like so long and you do more than that as well. So like you've had your hands in so many different other projects. Like I think I read that Jared, you did stuff like as an entrepreneur.
00:03:03
Speaker
and like other businesses. And then Jerome, you've done stuff with like Disney and just like so many things. So I'm wondering, let's go back as far as you want to. Like, how does that happen? And I don't know if you have siblings or not, but what was the groundwork for the creation of both of you guys? Yeah, sure. While going way back, you know, Jerome and I, so there are four brothers and I'm actually a twin. And then we have a younger brother,
00:03:32
Speaker
who's a filmmaker. But growing up, there were four boys in the house and for whatever reason Jerome and I really connected creatively. And we've been working together on stuff for as long as I can remember. We were fortunate enough to go to a pretty small school where the teachers were kind of creative in their approach.
00:03:50
Speaker
And they would let us collaborate across grades. And so at the time I was doing a lot of the writing, I would write stories. You know, we'd come up with these ideas and I'd write the text and Jerome would illustrate the pictures for those stories. And we got to do that in school. We did it at home. And we made our own little, little books, our own little stories. And you know, I don't know at the time if I thought we'd someday be making books together, I think.
00:04:16
Speaker
back then it was just really living in our sort of own world together and coming up with these characters. It was a lot of superhero stories but you know it was a ton of fun. It was a ton of fun. Jerome and you know we did that until we were teenagers and I think you know it was Jerome's idea to take it to the
First Book and Early Writing
00:04:35
Speaker
next level. Yeah I mean I'll share about that which is you know really as Jared said we love writing and
00:04:41
Speaker
drawing you know just as a creative outlet but we also like reading and I thought the next logical thing was well what if we can we write some of this stuff and get it published could we like make a book and so actually my mom took me to the bookstore and I bought like a small stack of books about how to write a book and get it published
00:04:57
Speaker
you know, three or four different versions of that. And we read it and it looked like super doable. I was like, oh, we could do this. So then we got together, came up with some ideas and just started doing what we had researched and made a dummy book. And, you know, our first actual book that we made that was published, we were teenagers when we wrote that. It was called Creepy Things Are Scaring Me. And that was traditionally published. So we sent, it was back in the days when you could like send an unsolicited manuscript to publishers and they would look at it.
00:05:27
Speaker
So we just, we did that and we sent it out and, uh, it like really blew us away that Harper Collins wanted to publish this manuscript. They wanted the text and, you know, they would have another professional illustrator illustrated. Um, but that was a very exciting, you know, experience that I think demonstrated or definitely gave me a certainty that I could write a book and put it out in the world. And that might be something that I could do or we could do, we did that as a team.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. And I think, Jared, you mentioned that your other brother is also into art as well. We were all into art. We actually, funny story, our dad, you know, if I've got sort of an entrepreneurial sort of spirit or bone in my body, it probably came from him. He was very entrepreneurial. He is very entrepreneurial.
00:06:12
Speaker
He's a man of big ideas, and like I said, there were four of us, and he had this idea. We were all in the music growing up. We all played music. Well, three of the four brothers were in the music. We tried to get our youngest brother into it so he could be a part of our band, and he didn't really take to it. Didn't work out? No.
00:06:32
Speaker
Our dad had this wild idea, you know, he saw how much we love music and he was like, look, if y'all start a band, y'all start a country band, I'll buy all the equipment for your band. And, you know, he had visions of us being like the Jackson Five, but for country music. It was kind of wild.
00:07:05
Speaker
But, you know, we pursued that for a little while. But, you know, he, Eric, our youngest brother, who wasn't into music, he was creative in his own ways. Like I said, he became a filmmaker, and he's a writer himself now.
Career Paths and Return to Publishing
00:07:17
Speaker
But we were all creative, and our parents encouraged that and supported us. But like I mentioned, Drum and I, I don't know, it clicked. And we went on to write that book, like you said, and get it published. I loved that. Yeah, yeah. I loved that.
00:07:33
Speaker
You know, we, it was pretty straightforward to get the book published. You mentioned all these other things that we ended up getting into. And what happened there was once we got that book published, we were like, all right, we made it. We're published authors. We're, you know, it's, you know, rich and famous, here we come sort of thing. And getting book number two out in the world, it took 20 something years before that happened.
00:07:57
Speaker
happened with the old truck. The old truck was book number two. And so we pursued other dreams. In the meantime, I started a few other companies. Jerome pursued his career as a graphic designer, ended up at Disney. And yeah, it was a lot of life lived between books and I think for the better, honestly.
00:08:15
Speaker
Wow, I think it's such a testament to your like just I guess I want to say your parents because like for you to say that that had big ideas and then allow all of you to just really pursue. Sounds like what you wanted to is amazing. I know that like as an educator, it's
00:08:30
Speaker
Like I teach international and I feel like there's a lot of this throughout a lot of school systems where like kids are being pressured into situations and jobs that they don't necessarily want to be in. And on top of that, all of you are into arts, which like I know as someone who loves art, it is not something that can easily be, you can't easily persuade your parents or other people even sometimes just that art is, can be a way of life or profession, right? So just hearing that I think is amazing.
00:09:00
Speaker
and hearing that he was a man of big ideas is just incredible. I want to know, because you work so closely together, who gets
Balancing Collaboration
00:09:12
Speaker
their way up? It has to be one of you.
00:09:15
Speaker
It's, this might be unbelievable, but it's so balanced. And the reason I think it's so balanced is we have different strengths. Even Jared mentioned it sort of in introducing us, but like he, I will definitely say is a stronger writer. I feel like, you know, there's a certain amount of wordsmithing and poetry, you know, writing that goes into the types of books that we do. And I'll give him, you know,
00:09:40
Speaker
He can take the lead on that for the most part. I really value his input and his opinion on that. So if there's something that comes up, I'll let him have that. I think on the illustrating, and I would guess I would say art direction, because some of it's just figuring out what a visual story is going to be. We both do it, but if something comes up on that often, he'll let me.
00:10:01
Speaker
have the say so on it. So I feel like just trusting each other with our strengths kind of makes it balanced. But we do have times where we come head to head and we just have to navigate that. I don't know, it's different every time. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, I think we grew up a lot, you know, since book one. On book two, we learned how to work together. The old truck taught us a lot. I think every book since then has gotten easier and easier for us to navigate.
Sibling Dynamics and Growth
00:10:27
Speaker
and it's just you know sometimes you just gotta say okay you got it this time you know i'm gonna get it next time but you get it this time it sounds like you both get along so well and again i know it's a podcast now but i just i don't know i get that feeling in general um that both of you get along really well and i get i think that's you said four boys is it four boys is all brothers all brothers like
00:10:49
Speaker
I can't even imagine. I'm sure there were some like, you know, some humps and bumps like when you were younger and what that looked like. But it sounds like there's a really strong, I guess, brotherhood in a sense where all of you kind of took care of each other. Who's the oldest? I am. So me and my twin brother Jason, we are the oldest. He's technically a few minutes older.
00:11:13
Speaker
But I'm older, Jerome's the middle and then Eric is our youngest brother. And I'll say, you know, looking back, I see my boys now and they get into it and they fight. You know, we had some, we were like best friends and worst enemies. But, you know, I don't know that
00:11:32
Speaker
I think that's just part of growing up. Now, you know, I look back and I couldn't imagine getting into it with Drum and some of the ways we used to get into it growing up. You know, we're just a lot more mature now, so we know how to communicate, we know how to talk about things. Whereas, you know, before when we were younger, maybe breaking one of his toys or, you know, hiding some of his stuff was the best way to keep it up.
00:11:54
Speaker
I was going to ask, Jerome, I was going to say, Jerome, what were some of the most annoying habits that your older brothers would have that would just bother you all the time? There has to be something. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it would probably be the same thing that we would have friction on if we had to live together as adults, which is I'm kind of a neat freak and I like everything very controlled and clean. And that's the one thing that there would sometimes be.
00:12:20
Speaker
friction on. I remember when I got my first car, and, you know, we were all going somewhere. And it's just like, it's really just a personality thing. It's like, please wipe your feet, please don't chew gum in the car. And then, and you're trying to navigate that. Yeah. Yeah. And Jared, what about you? Is it the same thing? Is that does that something that bothers? Well, not bothers you, but like, you know, no, Jerome, the drama has always been been sort of the need free of the bunch. For me, it was, you know, I didn't
00:12:47
Speaker
They were so drum is what he's two years younger than me and then our youngest was three years younger than him. So, Eric, the youngest he didn't hang out with us as much. You know I had a different relationship because I have a twin brother and so for us, it was very competitive. It was very competitive.
00:13:05
Speaker
you know, who's stronger, who's faster, who's smarter. Whereas Jerome and Eric, I kind of had to experience everything after us. I experienced it with my twin. And so I don't know, I think being annoying little brothers was probably the most usual thing getting in my stuff. And then, you know, with my twin, it was just, you know, it was
Parenting Philosophy
00:13:43
Speaker
And I guess my other question is just looking at just fatherhood in general. What are some of the things that you maybe talk about? Some of the things you're trying to, I don't want to say ingrain, but have conversations with your kids about that maybe have come from past experiences with your family. What are some of the things you talk about? For me, it's mostly trying to raise them to be good people.
00:14:10
Speaker
and really know how to treat others the way they want to be treated and particularly their brother, you know, like both on both sides, they'll do things to each other that get on the other's nerves or treat them in a way that they don't really, you know, find. Like there's some upsets and there's some disputes and you're just like looking back, I see that it happened in our house all the time and my parents put up with it and they took care of it. So I think it's something they have to go through and figure out on their own.
00:14:39
Speaker
but I also try to just help them understand that there are other ways to handle their upsets than to push each other or hit each other or any of the other number of things they'll get up to. I think for me, that's the most important thing. And then outside the house, it's amazing what great people they are to other people.
00:14:58
Speaker
You know, sometimes my wife and I are really surprised how, you know, you'd never know that they treat each other the way they do sometimes when all their friends and all our friends think they're perfect little gentlemen.
00:15:14
Speaker
So I think we're doing some things right. They're good kids and just keep them on the right path. Yeah. And so for me, I would agree with that first thing that you said, Jared, about just trying to make them raise good humans, make them good people.
00:15:31
Speaker
Um, and he, I don't really know, you know, whatever we're doing, it's just natural. I don't feel like we're having a strong agenda with raising them, but, um, certainly kindness is, is very important. Um, and as you said, treating others where you'd like to be treated, all of that stuff, I think our learnings that we had coming up that I tried to pass on. Um, and then something that I was very conscious about recently, um, is, you know, just the fostering creativity. I was.
00:15:54
Speaker
Seeing with my oldest, she's seven, and she is really interested in art. Like, you know, she's doing, making sculptures. She wants to write her own comics and that type of thing. And I realized, like, we didn't really have a proper space for her to do that in the house. And I was like, no clay, no, you know, no paint.
00:16:14
Speaker
um and making you know making it not that easy and then I was just thinking back you know my parents like really didn't care and my bedroom was covered with drawings and stuff and I was like you know actually I think we need to make this uh I don't want to like cut her create I want to you know encourage it so that's something that just in the last month you know something I was realizing that we needed to change and uh hopefully hopefully we're doing that a little bit
00:16:38
Speaker
I love that.
Youthful Team Sports and Storytelling
00:16:39
Speaker
I love that. I love that both of you kind of mentioned that just being a good human is so important. And it's not something that you can just make a list of things and just try and do all of those things to make sure that that happens. I think a lot of it sounds like they're probably just watching you and other family members. And they're subconsciously just starting to do some of those things, which is amazing.
00:17:04
Speaker
I guess the other question that I had was, what are some of your fondest memories of each other growing up? And where did you guys grow up together? What state was that? Texas. We grew up in Houston. Texas. In Houston? OK. So what are some of your fondest memories together? I'm curious if they would be the same for both of you.
00:17:28
Speaker
Um, well, I'll tell you, I mean, just thinking on the spot here, one thing that I used to really like doing as Jared mentioned, um, they were older by just a bit. Um, and they were kind of, um, I think like, you know, very outgoing, pretty athletic. Um, I enjoyed being in their footprints because like in school and our friend, friend groups, they'd always sort of like to make a name for the Pumphrey brothers. So it was fun. I really enjoyed being able to, um,
00:17:55
Speaker
like play with them in an activity like if we were doing capture the flag which used to be a fun game that we play in the neighborhood. I always love being you know on their team so that's Jason and Jared. It's just fun participating in team sports together.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah. I think some of my fondest memories go back to, you know, sitting down and coming up with these stories together, we have this character. We called him Wonder Willis. Jerome's name is actually Willis Jerome Humphrey. He's the third. Our dad is Willis Jr. And so we always called Jerome, Jerome instead of Willis. But Wonder Willis was like this alter ego. He wore a lot of purple and gold and
00:18:41
Speaker
He was a cool dude. He had a flat top. He was a superhero. So, you know, we, I don't know, it had to be a dozen different stories that we wrote and illustrated stuff for some of my favorite memories from growing up.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's so interesting too, because like, it's, it's, I guess, well, the age, the age, there's not much of an age gap, really, right? But yeah, just a couple of years. Yeah, just a couple of years. So I think a lot of your memories obviously blend together. I was gonna ask, so who was like, because of that also, like, who was the favorite? There had to be a favorite in the group. Like a favorite brother? Yeah, by the parents.
00:19:42
Speaker
One time I was visiting as an adult, I went to Jared's company. It was called Queer Correct. And then there was an employee that was like, oh, this is Jerome. Oh, he's the favorite. I get to meet the favorite. So I was like, I guess there's some conversations happening about this.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah. I think we were all favorites in different ways. Jerome was certainly more of a homebody, I'd say. And I could see my mom. Our mom, he and our mom were really close. I started a company with my dad. So in a different sort of capacity, I've been the son that has worked with him. He's a dentist.
00:20:31
Speaker
You know, growing up, he was like, uh, everyone outside the family always expected one of us to become a dentist and take over the practice or do something. And he would just always say, you know, none of them are going to be a dentist. Nobody, you know, he didn't want any of us to be a dentist, but like I said, he was super entrepreneurial.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so when he did have an opportunity to rope me into a company, I was making video games out in California at the time. And he was like, Hey, he called me up. You know, it's like, I'm starting a company. I need you here. Move back to Texas. And I just, I jumped on a plane and came down. You know, so what, you know, and like I said, I think for all, in different ways, that each, I'm anonymous for different things.
00:21:17
Speaker
Mm hmm. Y'all just seem like some like really great brothers to be around, honestly.
00:21:25
Speaker
That's amazing. It's amazing. So the last question is, if you can, like, what are some of the things you are working on and where can people find you online?
Current Projects
00:21:36
Speaker
Sure. So we are working on three projects concurrently right now. And we've got some other things in the pipeline coming up, but it's a more picture books. We're actually working on projects now.
00:21:49
Speaker
as the illustrator. We didn't write these books, but we're both illustrating the projects. One of them has been announced. It's in 20 eighties, the last stand. And that book is, it's amazing. The text is amazing. And we're so excited about the illustrations we'll get to do. We're doing another one that hasn't been announced. So we can't, you know, I don't, I never know what we can share and can't share. So we just, we kind of follow their lead. They haven't talked about it yet. So when we're not talking about it, but it's another one. It's a big one.
00:22:20
Speaker
And then we're working on our first chapter book. It's kind of a hybrid book. It's graphic novel, part graphic novel, part prose novel. Really excited about that one. And that one comes out next year. Wow. That's amazing. Anton and I have had conversations. He's so excited to work with you guys. I'm excited for him. I'm excited for you. I just, again, love everything that you guys do. So I'm curious of what that's going to look like.
00:22:49
Speaker
I just know that it will be everything that I can, probably more than what I can imagine, to be honest. So I'm just really excited to see that. Where can people find both of you online? Yeah, so we're both on Instagram, I think the most, and our handles are at jpumpfree for Jared and at wjpumpfree for me.
00:23:11
Speaker
And we have the same handle on Twitter. And we have a website, thepumpfreebrothers.com, which keeps a running record of pretty much the important things that we share on social media. Yeah, awesome. Gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for hanging out. I kept you way longer than I told you. But I appreciate the time. I do.