As I Descended Author Robin Talley on Queer YA Retellings of Classic Stories

Ash, by Malinda Lo
To the best of my knowledge, Ash is the first-ever YA retelling of a fairy tale with a queer character at its center―and it might be the first queer YA retelling of any classic story. Described as a “lesbian Cinderella” when it was first released, Ash is a dreamy, complex story that features actual fairies, as well as human characters. Ash follows the older versions of the tale rather than the Disney update, but it isn’t afraid to diverge from the Brothers Grimm. In fact, it introduces a new character, the king’s huntress, who is much more interesting to readers and to Ash herself than the rather dull prince. Don’t forget to check out Lo’s companion novel, Huntress, set in the same universe and also focusing on a girl/girl couple.

Great, by Sara Benincasa 
Of all the American novels in the canon, The Great Gatsby may have been the one most screaming for a modern YA update―and in Great, it gets a queer one, at that. In glamorous East Hampton, Jacinta, the mysterious next-door neighbor of narrator (and outsider) Naomi, seems oddly obsessed with up-and-coming model Delilah, and in a community full of lavish parties and dramatic deceptions, nothing is quite what it seems. With a same-gender relationship taking on the role played by the all-important central romance in the Fitzgerald novel, Great has casual drug use and helicopter flights, washed-up child stars and symbolic green lights―in short, everything you could want from a classic retelling.

And I Darken, by Kiersten White
In this astonishing start to a new historical fiction trilogy, Vlad the Impaler (who, it turns out, had nothing to do with the Dracula-the-vampire myth, aside from Bram Stoker stealing the name―whoops) is recast as a teenage girl named Lada. The novel alternates points of view between Lada and her younger brother Radu, known to history as “Radu the Handsome” (not a bad deal, if you ask me). The setting is so detailed it feels almost modern, and the story follows Lada and Radu from childhood into adolescence. Radu’s growing awareness of his queerness in the context of this world is fascinating to read. And for squeamish readers, just a heads up―there’s very little actual impaling in this book. But then, there are still two more books to go.

As I Descended, by Robin Talley
As it happens, I wrote this one 🙂 It’s a modern retelling of Macbeth with girls in the lead roles of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (and with a gay male couple cast as Banquo and Macduff), and the story takes place at a haunted boarding school. There are ghosts, there is mayhem, and, for me, there was a lot of fun digging deep into the themes and character motivations of Shakespeare’s text and figuring out how to transform them in the atmosphere of a competitive contemporary prep school in Virginia, where ambition is a given and the stakes always feel impossibly high. I also got to write my own versions of Lady Macbeth’s “hurry up and be a (wo)man and kill that dude” speeches, which was a ton of fun and I highly recommend it.

Beast, by Brie Spangler 
This Beauty and the Beast retelling features a transgender girl as Belle. If you’re anything like me, that’s all you need to know before you preorder (Beast comes out October 11). But if you need more, how about this: the main character, Dylan, standing in for the Beast, is an aspiring Rhodes scholar who is big and extremely hairy, and thus stands out a lot at his school. When he winds up in a therapy group and meets Jamie, he zones out and misses the part where she explains she’s trans, and falls for her, hard. It’s a modern, decidedly non-fairy-tale romance, with two beautifully complicated characters at its heart.