{"id":315866,"date":"2026-08-07T06:54:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T06:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315866\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T06:54:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T06:54:38","slug":"author-alyssa-hollingsworth-on-ya-debut-all-the-queens-curses-5-questions-and-a-rec-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315866\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Alyssa Hollingsworth on YA Debut \u2018All the Queens\u2019 Curses’ | 5 Questions and a Rec"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this Q&A series,\u00a0SLJ\u00a0poses five questions and a request for a book recommendation to a debut YA author. Alyssa Hollingsworth discusses\u00a0All the Queens\u2019 Curses\u00a0in this latest installment.<\/p>\n

1. Congrats on your YA debut! How would you describe your book to readers?
All the Queens\u2019 Curses<\/a> is a YA fantasy retelling of the\u00a0rare Scottish fairytale “Kate Crackernuts.”\u00a0If you like wild landscapes, princes in need of rescue, or Jane Austen vibes, this book is for you! It also deals with heavier themes, [including] representations of trauma and chronic illness.<\/p>\n

2. What drew you to YA to tell this story?
The short answer: I wanted to tell a story about trauma and chronic illness because at one time I was a teenager trying to navigate those challenges\u2014but, as a teen reader, I needed the magic of fantasy to make these tough topics safe. At around age fifteen, struggling with nightmares that turned out to be memories, I discovered the section for folk tales, fairy tales, and legends in my local library. I plucked a book off the shelf and began a journey.<\/p>\n

Many years, several autoimmune diagnoses, and a lot of counselling later, I began a PhD project centered around retellings, trauma, and healing. I wanted to know: How can authors responsibly portray trauma in books for young people? And how in the world do we model hope in a book\u2014which can be closed and set aside\u2014when our lives carry on without tidy, happily-ever-after endings?<\/p>\n

All the Queens\u2019 Curses is the creative outpouring of that academic research. But more importantly, it is a book for those of us trying to navigate strange bodies and stranger minds.<\/p>\n

3. What, if anything, surprised you while writing it?
I started my PhD (which included the manuscript that would become All the Queens\u2019 Curses) during 2020. I moved to the UK and unpacked my boxes just in time to go into lockdown. Because I had few local connections and I was immunocompromised, I had to isolate almost entirely alone. I remember going six months without touching another human being. Like many people, the world shrunk to the size of my apartment and my garden.<\/p>\n

Then lockdown lifted. I was deep into [writing] my retelling of “Kate Crackernuts,”\u00a0a fairy tale collected in the Orkney Islands. So I grabbed a friend and we ran off to Orkney for a research trip. It was like my heart had gone to sleep, frozen in fear for so long, and suddenly under the wide skies of Orkney, I discovered I still had the capacity for wonder. It was a magical experience that has stayed with me ever since. There is something absolutely enchanting about those islands.\u00a0I never expected to fall so deeply in love with such a remote place.<\/p>\n

4. Tell us more about the characters. Which character do you most identify with and why?
My two main characters are Kit and Idris. Kit has only been a princess for a few years, after her mother married the king,\u00a0and she still isn\u2019t used to it. Acts of service is her love language and if you give her a problem, you bet she\u2019s going to fix it. Trauma has triggered rheumatoid arthritis in her joints (though she doesn\u2019t have that language for what is happening). She is still learning how to live in a chronically ill body.<\/p>\n

Idris always loved a ball and is particularly fond of jigs. Unfortunately, being danced to death has kind of put a damper on the whole thing. But if you’re after a good time, you can’t do better than this (sometimes suspiciously) upbeat prince. You\u2019d hardly even know his family has a few skeletons in their closet.<\/p>\n

I identify most closely with Kit. I have given her a lot of the struggles I wrestled with as a teenager, though our stories are not the same. Mine, unfortunately, involves fewer selkies.<\/p>\n

5. What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
We are not our wounds. And hope is not some meek platitude. It is fingers dirt-stained and cracked from digging for the truth. It is threads woven from the words and actions of our loved ones. It is learning and relearning, again and again, until our brains can bear to hold joy. Hope is a curse breaker that does not require a cure to be true.<\/p>\n

The Rec: Finally, we love YA and recommendations\u2014what\u2019s your favorite YA book you’ve read recently?
I recently read The Swan\u2019s Daughter<\/a> by Roshani Chokshi, which was loosely inspired by “The Ugly Duckling.” Chokshi’s creative worldbuilding and Bachelor-esque twist on the story was so fun! I laughed out loud a few times and felt quite touched by the more serious themes near the end. Highly recommend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this Q&A series,\u00a0SLJ\u00a0poses five questions and a request for a book recommendation to a debut YA author.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[118859,118858,118857,118856,2878,66296,118691,66294,66293,66295,19709,9,24,63,122,124,123,66297,66298,66292,86066],"class_list":["post-315866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-5-questions-and-a-rec","tag-all-the-queens-curses","tag-alyssa-hollingsworth","tag-authors-illustrators","tag-books","tag-collection-development","tag-debut-author","tag-jlg","tag-junior-library-guild","tag-librarian","tag-library","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-reading-categories","tag-reading-levels","tag-school-library-journal","tag-ya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}