Melanin in YA recently had the pleasure of speaking with Sarah Raughley, the YA fantasy author of the forthcoming The Queen’s Spade duology as well as The Bones of Ruin trilogy, The Effigies trilogy, and Featherbound.
The Lady of Rapture, the final installment in The Bones of Ruin trilogy released this past spring and the cover reveal for The Queen’s Spade, out January 14, 2025, dropped today as well! After checking that out, be sure to come back here to read all about Sarah’s childhood, her most impactful interactions with readers, and defining success as a Black author. All of this is just part one of our packed interview.
Stay tuned for part two of this interview on Monday afternoon. This interview will also be aired in audio format at a near future date so stay tuned for that if you prefer to listen to interviews. Thank you so much for reading. Let’s begin!
Do you remember the first book you read where you saw yourself reflected?
Oh my gosh! It actually took awhile for me to find a book where I found myself reflected. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure I have fully yet. Just because when I was a kid, I read children’s books about the Underground Railroad, things like that. I was able to sort of see myself reflected as a Black person. But as a Nigerian Canadian living in the present day, I was like, okay, I wonder if there’s something out there that’s going to be for me, in terms of like, reflecting my experience.
I think it wasn’t until college that I read Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. That was actually set in Toronto. It’s a dystopian Toronto where it was imbued with Caribbean magic, Caribbean folklore, postcolonial transgression and challenging of white supremacist power. It’s just really cool.
Which is really cool, in part, because I think a lot of Caribbean culture shares a lot of cultural and mythological ties with Nigeria and Yoruba culture. So nowadays, when I read books by Deborah Falaye, and, you know, Louisa Onomé, and this is like more of a present day thing, that’s where I see there are other Nigerian Canadian authors that are writing books that make me feel a little bit like my unique experiences is valid. So that’s pretty cool. I love to see that in the children’s space, you have Black books across the diaspora and on the continent as well, that are really getting a lot of attention and love. So that’s great.
I want ask you the same thing in regards to movies and television. If there are any Black teen characters, Black TV shows in general, or along those lines, in those mediums as well, growing up?
Well, I would say that’s why we need certain… there’s certain authors that I hope Canadian TV, at least, Global TV or CBC Gem, or whatever, needs to make this into a TV series, or whatever. Because Black Canadians, African Canadians, it’s our own kind of culture, the way that we live in our space, the experiences that we’ve had, that would be phenomenal.
But growing up, I think I loved the fact that I had shows like reruns of Moesha, for example. I think Moesha actually was probably like the biggest influence for me, because I got to see a Black girl, a dark skinned Black girl with braids, you know what I mean? Just like me, in her element. It didn’t matter she was in LA, I’d never been to LA. But the experiences that she was going through… writing in her diary at the end of everything, dealing with boys, and all of that stuff, it was so familiar to me. And I remember there’s one episode of Moesha, that was so affirming to me, only because there’s one scene where she and her friend Kim go to a store to buy packs of hair for their braids. You know what I mean? To do their braids.
Where else are you going to see that?
Where else are you going to see that? Where else are you going to see that? So definitely, that was a big thing for me growing up.
I love that. Yeah, I loved Moesha as well. Staying in the growing up portion of your life, do you have a favorite library or bookstore from your childhood?
Oh, man, I moved around a lot when I was a kid. So I was never able to, to really have a connection to a specific bookstore. But I always loved when the bookstores that I did go to had events for kids. I think they still do it. I love attending them even now. If bookstores ask me to come in and do an event, I’m always happy to do it. Because when I was growing up, it just felt like such a community of other bookish geeks. I remember being really young and then having Harry Potter events, whenever those books would come out. And I know Harry Potter is problematic. The author is very problematic. But I still look at those days.
It’s still a memory.
It’s still a memory where bookstores would throw these events and they would have sit down and practice writing yourself. It was a good opportunity for them to sell other books, as well. If you like this book, you’ll like these other books. I discovered Percy Jackson, Ellen Enchanted, Howl’s Moving Castle, all sorts of other books, because I was in those bookstores playing around with my makeshift wand and hanging out with other geeks. So I think libraries and bookstores, we need to give them as much credit as we can. Because still, when they have those events, and they have Drag Queen hour, author visits and things like that, it’s so affirming for young kids. And it’s always been a place of safety, I guess.
I always love to go back to those memories as a teen, asking my mom, “Can you drop me off at the bookstore for this event?” I want to acknowledge those teens. Having been a published author for years at this point, what have been some of your favorite interactions with readers?
Oh, man, just having readers that have come up to me and it’s not their first time, it’s their second or third time and I know them by name. Or we’ve interacted on Twitter or on Instagram or something, and I’m meeting them for the first time in real life. Those are just really special moments. It’s so special to be able to just see people in real life who care about your books.
Online, it’s great when you talk to people. But when you can see the, and you can see their enthusiastic faces in real time, it’s just so great to be able to sign their books. And when you’re kind of hand selling them and maybe they haven’t read the book yet, but they’re kind of interested. This might be a new reader. You’re kind of telling them about your book and they’re getting excited. Because it proves that there are people who are willing to give things a chance. So I always love seeing just the expressions on people’s faces as I’m talking to them about book, or as they’re talking to me about my books. It’s affirming and it makes me kind of want to not give up on writing. For sure.
Please don’t. You are needed so much. I want to talk about one thing in particular, you mentioned. I love that you write YA, historical fiction in particular. Was it a conscious decision to write historical fiction? Is that just how the story came out? When did you fall in love with historical fiction?
It was definitely a conscious decision. I’ve always kind of loved period pieces in different cultures, American, European, Asian, I always love to see how things were back then and to learn a little bit about, you know, stuff. But it’s always hard, I think, when you’re Black, and you’re learning about the 19th century European, Victorian era, Renaissance, because of how things were for us back then. Stories often don’t depict this. Sometimes the stories that do try to insert Black people back into the narrative, do it in a way that for me, I’m not entirely comfortable with. I really love the Bridgerton and the time period of Bridgerton. But I kind of wanted more. I only watched the first season. So maybe I should watch the second one as well. But I kind of wanted more of a sense of an acknowledgement of what it would actually be like for a Black person growing up in that time, instead of kind of colorblind and this never happened.
So that’s kind of how I approached The Bones of Ruin. I had studied stories of Black people in Victorian England, and colonialism at this time, the Scramble for Africa were European leaders, without any Africans in the building, went to the Berlin Conference, and just took a map of Africa and just cut it up and said, that’s going to be your that’s British property, that’s French property, that’s German property, and so on and so forth. Also, I think the story of Sarah Baartman and the idea that there were at the time, human zoos, where Black people and people of color would be on display in these zoo-like situations.
People would come, they would pay money to look at them as if they were zoo animals. That’s how Sarah Baartman, who was originally from Southern Africa, that was how she lived the rest of her life. Even after she died, her body was put in a French museum. Her remains were put in a French museum for people to look at. Awful. So all of this comes to bear on this time period. Some of us can read the books and just enjoy the dresses and the balls and the debutantes and all of that stuff. I enjoyed that, steampunk and all that. But I can’t ignore, as a Black person, that slavery hadn’t been abolished in certain parts of the world. Or it had just been abolished but Jim Crow laws were starting, you know? And various other post-antebellum discrimination.
So for me, writing historical fiction, I’m just trying to unearth some of that Black history as well. That’s what I’m doing with my new book, which is coming out winter 2025, with Harper Teen, The Queen’s Spade, which is kind of a reimagining of the story of Queen Victoria’s African goddaughter. I didn’t even know that Queen Victoria in the 19th century had an African goddaughter, but she did.
I did not know that.
What are the histories that we know? What are the histories that we’re taught? What are the histories that are buried? I think historical fiction is such a good opportunity to just draw all of that out.
There’s so much to unearth there, so much story that people are not either tapping into or publishers are not picking up enough. We’ll get to that. Before I get to that, I am curious to know how many Black educators did you have growing up, or in high school in particular? I’ve had this conversation with friends before, and we look back and we realize it was either none or one to two.
Zero. Zero. Let me see, how many people of color did I have growing up? I mean, they were, I would say 99% white. Even in university, I think it wasn’t until university that I had BIPOC educators. I think the education system, I mean, that’s a big problem, right? Because not only are there very few Black educators, that are being given the opportunity, right? Because there are so many people that could be educators, but are they being hired?
Then the second thing is, what histories are we learning? Right now, in some places of the world, they’re trying to get rid of African American history in schools.
It’s terrifying.
It’s terrifying. Or they’re trying to basically lie and not tell the truth. So tell an untrue version of slavery or an untrue version of Jim Crow laws and not tell you anything about the Harlem Renaissance writers and this and that. It’s really scary. Growing up in Canada, I didn’t even learn that Canada had slaves as well. Not just African slaves, but indigenous slaves. That was a part of our history. We didn’t learn that. We learned that Canada was a place where American slaves went to through the Underground Railroad… slaves escaped north. We actually learned a lot of African American history. In terms of learning about Black history, we learned a lot about African American history, but it was very much slavery escaped to either the northern states or to Canada. But we didn’t learn about the fact that Canada had slaves as well.
We didn’t learn about the fact that a lot of those slaves that escaped from America to Canada how they were treated or that they were sent to Nova Scotia so that they could be shipped back to Africa and all of this stuff.
There’s a movement now to be like, we need to teach these histories and people are writing those books. I think that if there were more Black educators at all levels and on the district school boards, then maybe more of this history would be taught.
Bringing that to the YA publishing industry, do you think that the YA publishing industry is truly ready to decenter whiteness? We’ve had, campaigns, we’ve seen an increase over the past decade with books coming out from BIPOC authors. But it’s not just about the books coming out. They have to pay us what we’re due. They have to market our books, not do the bare minimum, not focus on the same handful of Black authors that are popular for the time. They really need to invest in whatever Black authors they are signing. I’m not really seeing enough of that investment. What are your thoughts?
Mm-hmm. So we’re going to break this down. Yes. In the words of Lisa Left Eye Lopez, RIP Queen, “Let’s do the math.”
Okay. So we have publishing industry run largely by white people. Because it is largely a kind of like a family, friend of a friend. It’s very, the publishing industry is very much like a who you know kind of a deal. So certain people that are able to get jobs, that are able to get into those positions where they become the gatekeepers, likely they had some kind of in. They had friends or family or just being a white person of a certain economic class. They had more opportunities to get into that old boys club, right? It’s starting to get a little better, but it’s not really where it needs to be.
So already you have people who are making the decisions that are making it from a very white lens. So even if they are trying to champion diversity, they’re championing diversity from a white lens. So what does that mean? That means that the stories that they will buy and sell are the stories that make sense to them as white people. Even when it comes to African stories, your Nigerian stories. Oh, it has to be the Orisha. Let’s get some books with the Orisha in here. That’s the only kind of African fantasies that we want because those are the kind of African fantasies that we understand.
Those are the kinds of African stories that have become popular with a white crowd, with white readerships. That’s what they understand. They don’t understand the nitty gritty of what it’s like to live any battle in the eighties or nineties or two thousands. They don’t watch Nollywood movies.
They don’t have the parents, so they just go for what they know has sold in the past. Tomi Adeyemi sold Children of Blood and Bone, which I love. But since then, publishers are like, “Okay, we want more of that,” instead of diversifying. It’s the same thing with African American fantasy and what kinds of stories with Black characters can sell and what kind can do well. I think readers are like this as well. Readers say they will support Black books but I think they have certain expectations of Black books.
If your Black book doesn’t meet their very narrow expectation of what a Black book or Black fantasy, a Black contemporary should be, then it’s kind of like, you’re on the chopping block. So there are so many narrow expectations and if you don’t meet those particular standards, you’re kind of on the outs.
On top of that, I hate to say this, but I feel like as Black authors, we’re always fighting for the scraps. There’s a few scraps on the table and just some room, a few seats for certain Black authors or authors of color, right? But let’s just focus on Black authors. There are a few seats at the table. Once you get your seat at the table, you’re trying to keep your seat at the table. Other people are just floundering, trying to get scraps in terms of publisher attention. In terms of, are you a front list title? Are you going to be sent to festivals like Winter Institute, YALL West, YALL Fest. And even there, in terms of the Black authors that we invite, we’re going to take the ingenues, we’re going to take the authors that we already know sell. But there’s so many other Black authors that never even get a chance and they don’t get a chance.
They never get a chance in marketing. They don’t get a chance when it comes to the publicity. This is made worse by the fact that in publishing, a lot of those marketing departments, publicity departments, those budgets have been slashed. So in terms of the money that’s going around, they’re not going to put a lot of money in the authors that really need it. So the authors that really need it are kind of left to use their own means to try and hopefully get their name out there. So a lot of us are just scrambling on Instagram or TikTok hoping for a viral moment.
Maybe if we get a viral moment, then more people will find our books. And then, once we build a readership, then we’ll get some kind of publisher support. But not before then. So it’s kind of like a weird reversal of how it should be.It’s very tough. I actually wrote an article for a Canadian publication, The Walrus, that talks about how the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 actually did lead to a boost in my sales. But that boost didn’t last.
I think that’s because this desire to champion Black books, it wanes sometimes. People are all rah, rah diversity. And then after a few years, they’re like, “Oh, this diversity thing, we’re so tired of it.” So as a Black author, sometimes I just find myself kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. The only thing that I can do is just write and hope that people find my book.
So from that, I want to know, how do you define success for yourself as a writer? Some of us define it by hitting the best sellers list, which you can’t control. Some of us define it by being able to comfortably pay our bills. How do you define it for yourself? Do you have any author bucket list things that you want to happen in your career? We see authors who get six or seven-figure deals and drop off. Some authors are fine with that. Some authors do want a more long term career if they know that they are not going to earn out. There are so many different factors. So what what would you say is your ideal situation for seeing yourself as a successful writer?
It’s a hard game to play. Because on one hand, when I see other authors do well, I’m genuinely happy for them, especially when they are Black authors. I know how tough it is out here. When I see them hitting the bestseller lists, great, we’re out here! Kids who need those books are getting those books.
On the other hand, I remember growing up in an era, like you said, when authors were getting seven-figure deals. There was a time post Twilight where oh my gosh, it felt like every other author was getting a seven-figure deal, dystopian YA when that was the craze or supernatural YA. I think that warped some of the earlier expectations I had on earlier on in my career.
When the reality hit that actually most authors have day jobs and they’re writing, just trying to get their work out there, slow and steady, step by step, I kind of had to come back to earth. I think the gap between reality and my hopes made me feel somewhat like a failure. I’m not on a bestseller list and getting these. huge deals. My books aren’t on Vogue. I’m not taking photo shoots.
The glitz and the glam.
Yeah. So I started to feel like I was a failure until I actually saw my fans, my readers in person. I realized that even if you’re just selling a few books, there are people out there that love your stories. So now I think I have a healthier way of dealing with it. I’m not where I was in the very beginning of my career when I was saying, “Why isn’t my work taking off the way that other people’s are? Am I just a bad writer? What’s going on?”
In terms of a bucket list, of course the glitz and the glam come. I’m not gonna turn it away. Of course I would love to get on a bestseller list but I think for me, I really want to be able to keep writing because I have so many ideas in my head. I would love to keep writing so that I can keep interacting with my fans, going to festivals, either local or maybe in America…or maybe one day overseas in parts of Europe, parts of Africa, parts of Australia. Different parts of the world where I can meet people and see them, that would be great. I can talk to people and see that my words have gone beyond my laptop to other people.
It’s good to have a healthy mindset because other people’s journeys aren’t your journey. That’s what I always tell myself. If some people want to take that seven-figure deal and dip, that’s fine. We just don’t know what’s going to happen in the publishing industry. For me, I definitely want to keep having books out there so I can keep meeting readers.
Stay tuned for Part Two of our interview with Sarah Raughley on Monday, July 29, 2024.
Be sure to pre-order The Queen’s Spade by Sarah Raughley today.
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