An Interview with Kristin Cashore

Five questions for Kristin Cashore

With Graceling, Kristin Cashore wrote a first novel that was a remarkably disciplined fantasy, with just a single magical element giving the story its premise (and title): the heroine Katsa, like only a handful of others in her world, is “graced” with one extraordinary power, in her unfortunate case, a grace for killing. While the book has intrigue and swordplay aplenty, it is also a juicy romance. This month, Cashore follows Graceling up with Fire, a prequel set in the same world but a generation earlier and featuring Fire, another charismatic heroine. (14 years and up)

1. If you could have one Grace, what would you want it to be? Well, if you’d asked for my sci-fi superpower of choice, I would have said teleporting, hands down, but you didn’t, and teleporting isn’t realistic as a Grace. So I’m going to go with languages. One of my sisters has a language gift — after a few months of study in Finland, she was more or less fluent in Finnish — and I am definitely not like that! Give me the Grace of being fluent in any language after a day or two of hearing it in use.

2. Why do you think palace intrigue has become such a prominent trope in fantasy fiction? Hmm. You know, I think a palace is the fantasy novel’s version of a boarding school — or college dorm, if you prefer. Everyone lives together in one big building or set of buildings. Everyone’s on top of everyone else; there’s a forced intimacy in relationships; secrets are harder to keep and it’s more important that they be kept; the tension never ceases, because no one ever goes home for the night; it’s easy to sneak between bedrooms. Plus: hidden doorways! Secret passages! Tapestries to hide behind! Dumbwaiters to send secret objects of dire importance from floor to floor! Walkways on the roof! Spiral staircases! Moats and drawbridges and walls made of shrubberies! I’m beginning to wonder how you could even ask this question.

3. What fantasy novel or series would you recommend to the unconverted or unconvinced? If it’s a person who likes slow-moving, introspective novels, I might send them to Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, the first book in her King Arthur trilogy (told from Merlin’s perspective). If it’s someone who likes character-rich YA realism, I might give them Cynthia Voigt’s Novels of the Kingdom, because they aren’t typical fantasy — no one has magical powers — but they take place in a made-up universe and have the feel of fantasy. If it’s a reader who’s really, really resistant, I might take a sideways route and have them try some magical realism or softcore sci-fi. Maybe Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies or Peeps, or Margaret Mahy’s The Tricksters. I would also recommend Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia books to just about anybody, but that may be the inveterate fantasy-lover in me speaking.

4. In writing Fire, did you find yourself wishing you could change anything in Graceling? There are a thousand things I wish I could change in Graceling, but they’re more for the sake of my current work-in-progress or for Graceling’s own sake than for anything to do with Fire. Fire takes place in a different part of my fantasy universe, so I was practically able to start over and create a new world for the writing of Fire.My current work-in-progress, tentatively called Bitterblue, is a whole other kettle of fish. Bitterblue takes place in the same part of the world as Graceling, and, honestly, I don’t even know where to start. Why didn’t I ever make up a unit for measuring distance in Graceling? Because I could really use one now, and the third book in a series is a weird time to suddenly say, “Ah, yes, it’s 100 killybongs from here to there; we all know how long a killybong is, don’t we?” Also, speaking of distances, there’s the little matter of an impenetrable forest and an uncrossable mountain range between Sunder and Monsea that were oh-so-convenient for slowing my intrepid heroes down in Graceling, but that are creating all sorts of headaches for me now as I write a novel in which various people of all stripes are constantly visiting Bitterblue’s court in Monsea. All the journeys have to take so ridiculously long and require many backbreaking supplies! Sigh . . .

5. The Horn Book is something of a proud parent of the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature, with Horn Book editors Paul and Ethel Heins having been part of the Center’s founding in the 1970s. What was the value of their master’s degree for you? I can’t overstate the value of my graduate experience at Simmons. Simmons is where I learned to think critically and creatively about books. The instructors are fabulous, the reading list is a joy, the classes are rigorous; I immersed myself in the experience completely, and the first thing I did after graduating was write Graceling. I would not be where I am now if it weren’t for the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature.

Notes from the Horn Book October, 2009