Superpowers, Exuberant Characters and Diversity in YA: An Interview with Catherine Egan, Author of ‘Julia Vanishes’
Kirkus Reviews has hailed Julia Vanishes as “a well-realized page-turner,” as Catherine Egan weaves a taut, suspenseful fantasy with a heroine both fearless and flawed. Julia lives in a city terrorized by a serial killer. A city that witnesses the drowning of anyone deemed a witch, and that has outlawed all forms of magic. With no biological family to call her own, Julia and her brother have taken up with a group of thieves, where her ability to remain unseen helps her to survive. When Julia finds a job spying in the house of a woman known to aid witches and associate with a cast of mysterious characters, she realizes that her livelihood may be hurting the people she cares for most. A traitor no matter how she looks at it, Julia faces the ultimate dilemma with results both surprising and stunning.
- Tell us a little about your heroine, Julia. What went into crafting her character? What makes her unique?
Julia is a sixteen-year- old thief and spy living in a fantastical version of early twentieth-century Paris. She has the ability to be not quite invisible, but to pull back from the visible world so that as long as she is still and quiet, people’s eyes will just pass over her — a very useful trick for a spy. Her mother was a witch who was drowned in a public cleansing when Julia was seven years old. Julia is basically a hedonist, devoted to her brother and in love with the wrong guy. She initially enjoys the intrigue and adventure of her new job, but when things take a darker turn she’s forced to confront her conscience for the first time and figure out what really matters to her.
I’m careful and deliberate when it comes to plot and world-building, but character development is one thing I approach very loosely and instinctively — by beginning to write. I knew the facts of her life and the outline of her story when I started writing, but Julia’s voice emerged in the very first chapter I drafted, which is a huge reason why that first draft came so easily. I’ve had to revise, prod, pull, and tinker with the story and the world a great deal since then to make it all work, but Julia has been exuberantly and irrepressibly Julia the whole time.
2. Fantasy is a genre with a long history that traces back to folklore and oral storytelling. What is it about the fantastic that gives the genre such longevity?
Our need for stories is, at least on some level, a need to live other lives, love other loves, inhabit other skins, and so on. Stories take us far beyond the confines of our own lives and selves, and of course fantasy lets us go to whole other worlds and experience things that are completely impossible. I love the challenge of inventing a world — or bending the rules of our own world — and I love exploring the worlds other authors have created. Fantasy offers an incredibly freeing experience, both for the writer and the reader.
3. Julia’s ability to see the unseen is an interesting power to have — especially with witches and witchcraft running amok. Why did you give Julia this particular power?
Who wouldn’t love to be (semi-) invisible? It’s a fun power to play with, perfect for a spy, and very convenient for showing what is going on with other characters while still telling the story in first person! I didn’t give Julia any powers beyond this one because I wanted her to be forced to rely on her wits and to be pitted against enemies much stronger than her, including a few who can see her even when she’s “vanished.” Keeping her limited and human makes the conflict more frightening, I hope. The reason she can vanish is backstory that will emerge in later books.
4. There’s been a lot of conversation about women in YA and how, despite being perceived as a “female” genre, much of the acclaim and attention still goes to male authors. What do you think about the interaction between gender and young adult fiction?
Mainly I’m concerned that guys should be reading books from a female perspective — especially books like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson or Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston. I have two little boys and I’m so distressed by the way that books get labeled really early as “girl” or “boy” books. I’ve tried to make sure that their early forays into the world of books are rich and varied and not limited in stupid ways. And I dearly hope that when they get older they will choose books that take them out of themselves and help them to see the world from other points of view.
My own reading tends to skew female, and overall I’d say that white women seem to be faring pretty well in YA. The fact that POC and other marginalized voices are still only rarely breaking through in a big way seems like the bigger issue. It sounds dramatic, but deep down I truly believe that the world would be better if more people read books from a wide range of perspectives — empathy being the true antidote to evil! I hope that white kids and straight kids and cis kids and able-bodied kids (and adults too, of course!) are reading passionately and widely and diversely, exploding their view of the world — but those books need to be available and visible, on bookshelves and buzzed about, in order for it to happen.
5. An ever-growing number of movie studios are turning to adaptations of books for source material. How would you feel about your novel being adapted for film? Any actors in your dream cast?
I would be delighted, of course, because of the filthy lucre. I think it must be fascinating and very strange to see something you’ve transmitted from head to page turned into somebody else’s vision on the screen — everything and everyone looking very different, presumably, from how you imagined. The characters from Julia Vanishes are too themselves in my head for me to imagine them played by particular actors. My dream cast is all nonexistent actors who look and sound and behave exactly like my characters.
BONUS: What five young adult fantasy novels are absolute must-reads?
Lists that force me to leave off so many favorites are excruciating; I have to do it fast and off the top of my head so I’m not really choosing between beloved books.
Graceling, Kristin Cashore
Witchlanders, Lena Coakley
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older
Plain Kate, Erin Bow
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
OK, that was six. I’m a cheater. And here is a bonus on top of your bonus: it’s not YA, but I’m yelling at everyone, everywhere (absolutely including teens) to read N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, which blew my mind and gave me actual nightmares. (If you think book-nightmares are a good thing, you are my kind of reader.)
Catherine Egan grew up in Vancouver, Canada. Since then, she has lived on a volcanic island in Japan (which erupted while she was there and sent her hurtling straight into the arms of her now-husband), in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Beijing, on an oil rig in the middle of Bohai Bay, then in New Jersey, and now in New Haven, Connecticut. She is currently occupied with writing books and fighting dragon armies with her warrior children.
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