One Night With the Pillow Fight League, a guest post by Stephanie Cooke

The year is 2016 and as I’m sitting on my couch in my apartment that is essentially one long hallway with a couple of “rooms” along the way, I receive a text from a good friend. In the text, my friend is excitedly telling me about a project that they’ve taken on—they’re now the president of The Pillow Fight League! Wow, exciting! …I don’t entirely know what that is, but I’m super happy for my friend. Then they ask me a question that will genuinely wind up changing my life: will you participate in a tryout event that’s being televised? I should take a moment to note that the PFL was on hiatus at the time and this tryout event was to potentially relaunch the league and showcase what it was all about.
They give me a few other details and without asking any other questions, I agree to do it. At no point do I think to do any research…I just assume that it’s a pillow fight. No additional information needed. I let the days pass by without a worry in my head about the impending “fight” that I’m about to be a part of.
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If I had done my research, I would’ve realized that the Pillow Fight League is a very real thing and while yes, there is pillow fighting involved, it’s nothing like what you might have in your head. This version of pillow fighting is a semi-professional fight club where anything goes as long as the pillow is the first point of contact. It’s more roller derby or WWE-style wrestling than a pillow fight in pajamas at a girls’ night sleepover.
So the day of the tryout event comes and I continue to not have a single concern in my head about what’s about to transpire. After work, I make my way to the venue and meet up with my friends who are there for support and to cheer me on, inclusive of my president of the league pal.

The reigning champion of the league shows up—a Suicide Girls-esque woman with bright green hair, piercings, tattoos, and a cool ass outfit. She goes by Carmen Monoxide and she oozes badassery (all words are made up at some point and I’ve just made up that one). She gathers the newbie fighters and does a demonstration. I proceed to watch her absolutely pummel a grown man with a pillow, my eyes growing wider with each hit. But then she tackles this man to the ground—I cannot stress the fact enough that he was not a small man but she was a small woman—and from there, puts this man in a CHOKEHOLD with a PILLOW! If my eyes were wide at the time of the pummeling, I can’t even begin to imagine what I looked like watching this happen. Especially with the knowledge that I was going into the ring next.
After the massacre demo match, Carmen then gave us a more basic rundown of the rules and some moves that we could utilize…aside from pummel and pray. The newbies were matched up randomly and the fights began.
My first match went okay—although the two minutes per round felt like an eternity. I thought I was relatively in shape but as it turns out, when you’re waving a pillow around like your life depends on it while also simultaneously trying to use it as a shield…you get winded pretty quickly. The second match is where it gets dicey—as I tried to move away from my opponent, I wound up rolling my ankle. At first I didn’t realize how much it hurt since I was pretty laser-focused on trying to survive my time in the ring. But when the match concluded, I felt the pain and thought that I may have broken it.

I stuck around for the remainder of the event, watched additional matches, and did interviews. And then promptly made my way to the ER where I had to explain how I hurt myself in an extreme pillow fight to my…taxi driver, the intake nurse, several other nurses, the x-ray technician, and the doctor. All of whom were delighted by this mayhem. In the end, I only sprained my ankle, thankfully, and was sent on my way with instructions to stay off my foot as much as possible.
And while I never made my way back to the league, I couldn’t get the idea of it out of my head. While working with another group of creators on a different project, I told them about the event and my role in it, and began spit balling a fictional take on it. From that conversation, PILLOW TALK was born. While the league in the book and all of the characters are completely fictional, I poured a lot of myself—including my own insecurities and baggage—into many of the characters, especially Grace and Callie, our two main characters.
Now I’m excited to get to talk about this story and what inspired PILLOW TALK. It is a true joy getting to tell people that the league actually existed and to talk about my one-night stand with it. And while Toronto’s PFL no longer exists, pillow fighting is now an official combat sport that MMA fighters and other people who enjoy being walloped, participate in. I’m thrilled that it lives on in a new form and I can point people to this absolutely wild sport and get people hyped. The version in the graphic novel is my own, melded with several other things, but the core remains the same—pummel people with pillows and be the last person standing.
Meet the author

Stephanie Cooke is a writer and editor based out of Toronto, Canada. She is the writer of the middle-grade graphic novels, Racc Pack, ParaNorthern and Oh My Gods! as well as Pillow Talk, her first YA graphic novel. You can visit thepff.online or stephaniecooke.ca or on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/hellocookie
About Pillow Talk by Stephanie Cooke with illustrations by Mel Valentine Vargas
Grace Mendes a.k.a. Cinderhella is a fierce competitor in the PFF, a pillow fight federation that’s part roller derby, part professional wrestling. But in this fresh, coming-of-age YA graphic novel, Grace needs to learn to overcome her biggest enemy: herself. For fans of Check, Please and Bloom.
When college freshman Grace Mendes reluctantly attends her first pillow fight match, she falls in love with the surprisingly gritty sport.
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Despite her usually shy, introverted, and reserved nature, Grace decides to try out for the Pillow Fight Federation (PFF), a locally famous league of fighters with larger-than-life personas like Pain Eyre, Miss Fortune, and champion Kat Atonic. They may battle with pillows, but there is nothing soft about these fighters. The first and only rule to pillow fighting is that the pillow needs to be the first point of contact; after that, everything else goes.
Grace struggles with deep-seated body image issues, so she is especially shocked when she makes the competitive league and is welcomed into the fold of close knit, confident fighters. As her first official fight performing as newly crafted alter-ego/ring persona Cinderhella looms on the horizon, the real battle taking place is between Grace and her growing insecurities. What if people laugh or make fun of her? Why did she think she could pillow fight in the first place when she doesn’t look like your “typical” athlete?
Turns out, no one is laughing when Cinderhella dominates her first match in the ring. And as her alter-ego rises through the ranks of the PFF, gaining traction and online fame (and online trolls), can Grace use the spotlight to become an icon for not just others, but most importantly, for herself?
Pillow Talk is an inclusive, high-octane, outrageously fun graphic novel that aims a punch at the impossibly high standards set for women in sports (and otherwise) and champions the power of finding a team that will, quite literally, fight for you. A knock-out!
ISBN-13: 9780358525714
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 04/30/2024
Age Range: 14+ Years
Filed under: Guest Post

About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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