When Jonah Newman recently visited San Francisco University High School, where he graduated in 2012, while on a trip back to the Bay Area, he realized not much had changed. It felt like a “full-circle moment” to wander the familiar halls, say hi to many of his former teachers who were still there and walk past the baseball field where he spent the defining majority of his high school years.

For years, Newman, who grew up in Mill Valley, tried to tell the story of his high school experience and journey to authenticity, but it never fully felt right. That is until he wrote and illustrated “Out of Left Field,” his semi-autobiographical graphic novel about a gay teen, also named Jonah, who comes into his own on and off the ballfield.

Newman, an editor at Graphix, Scholastic’s graphic novel imprint, will discuss his work at 4 p.m. today at the Daly City Public Library, at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Napa Bookmine and at 3 p.m. June 2 via livestream for the Mill Valley Public Library. Register at millvalleylibrary.libcal.com/event/12371285.

He lives in Brooklyn with his husband.

Q When did your interest in writing and illustrating begin?

A Ever since I was a kid. I had a supportive family that really encouraged me, which I think was essential. I would write and draw my own books, and sell them to my family. They all paid up willingly. And that for me, as a little kid, was so important and gave me the belief in myself to continue making art even when it wasn’t always quite as successful. Before “Out of Left Field,” I spent years working on a graphic novel that I ended up publishing online because it got ignored or rejected by every agent and publisher I pitched it to. Being able to fall back on the belief that my family had in me in moments like that, where the rest of the world isn’t quite in my corner, allowed me to persist and eventually get to a point where I got better as a creator.

Q Do you think your younger self would have picked this up?

A Absolutely. I would have read it in secret or in private, but I would have. I had crushes on boys when I was a young teenager, but I didn’t really put a label on it or realize what that meant until later on. I hope that regardless of whether they’re queer, that young people can relate to it. There are certain elements of being in high school and growing up that almost everybody can relate to: the awkwardness and wanting to fit in and exploring romance and sex for the first time. I really was just trying to tell my story and the story that I was emotionally compelled to tell.

Q You first wrote about your high school baseball experience in college. What inspired that?

A I still had really strong emotions and memories from my senior season. I had a dramatic falling out with my coach that was related to me being benched and feeling like I didn’t deserve it. It was upsetting for me at the time. My freshman year of college, I wanted to process those emotions through art. I wrote that story, and then a couple years later, I made a comic that covered similar ground. I still felt like I hadn’t quite done justice to my high school story. And once I started to bring in other elements of my high school and coming-of-age experience, especially relating to sexuality, that was the key to allowing me to do justice to this story finally. My experience in baseball in that “bro-ey,” jock environment impacted the way that I came of age as a gay person and the way I handled that.

Q What was it like going down memory lane years later?

A It was therapeutic to make it and realize like the deeper heart of why was I so interested in baseball in high school? What I realized, as I worked on the story, was I was fixated on the approval and respect of a particular kind of person at this school. I wanted to be taken seriously by my teammates. I wanted to be one of the guys. Performing well on the field in addition to navigating those social dynamics, I fixated on all of that. I think that the whole experience has just been my reckoning with these emotionally powerful experiences, and capturing them in an artistic form, which definitely is cathartic.

Q Why is it semi-autobiographical?

A What’s most important to me is to allow the reader to feel what I felt and how I can structure the story in a way that communicates that. I do think that the result is more compelling and relatable than it would have been if I had just stuck strictly to the facts.

Q When did you discover your love of baseball?

A I did develop a genuine love of playing baseball through high school. Even though it was really hard, even though it was often extremely frustrating and upsetting, there were enough good moments and enough fun moments to keep me coming back. When I got to college, I launched a campaign to found a club baseball team. We organized and self-funded and we finally got recognition, and the team is still up and running today, which is great. When I got to New York after college, I wanted to keep playing. One of my friends from the club baseball team had moved to New York as well. We started a softball team. And then I was told about this queer softball league. I ended up juggling the two teams for a bit before finally committing fully to the queer league, partially because a lot of the friends who had played in that first team had left the city and partially because I had such a great experience playing in the league and met a lot of really wonderful people. Maybe part of that is just I’m more relaxed and having more fun because I’m not worried about the homophobic stuff that I used to deal with in high school. I’m playing with predominantly other queer people, and we’re all just adults out there having fun on a Saturday, and this isn’t tied up with all I hope to be and achieve in high school.

Q What do you hope people get from your work?

A I hope that teenagers are empowered to be themselves, no matter what. I think that what my own experience and what Jonah’s experience in the book shows is that, even if it’s hard, being yourself is the wisest way to be. It will lead to more authentic relationships and happiness. Discarding what other people may think and sticking to one’s authentic self, I think that’s something that a lot of teenagers struggle to do. Hopefully, after reading my book, they’ll find it a bit easier. Making mistakes is another takeaway, because we all make mistakes. But, how we respond to those mistakes is really important, and that’s really what defines us.