We are back with another staff-favorite author interview! K. Ancrum is a Lambda Literary award-winning, National Book Award-nominated author of Young Adult thrillers like The Wicker King, Darling, The Corruption of Hollis Brown, Icarus, and The Weight of the Stars. Our senior library assistant, Gen Dietzel, was thrilled to interview Ancrum ahead of her September 2026 release, Adam, Mine.
G: One thing you need to know about me is that Hamlet is the love of my life, and I couldn’t help but draw similarities between The Wicker King’s August and Jack and Hamlet and Horatio. Was this at all intentional?
K: As a fellow lover of Hamlet, unfortunately no. But it is an incredible wonder how many pairings resonate with a similar dynamic! When I was first conceptualizing them, I wanted them to feel like an Ouroboros. Self consuming, increasing in density, tragic, ravenous, visceral. An endless thing hurtling towards the end.
I also get a lot of people who kind of assume that they're fanfiction of some other media, but they aren't. I think they're just picking up on the greedy delight of that kind of media and recognizing an understanding of it in my work. A lot of the stuff I "got away with" writing in The Wicker King, you'd only get to see somewhere like AO3 so there's some confusion of correlation v. causation going on there. It's a very unique YA book for its time.
G: There is an interesting level of nuance when it comes to codependency in your novels. Of course, these characters are codependent but they are truly integral to each other’s survival. I feel many teenage friendships and romances - especially amidst trauma - feel like this. Can you talk a little bit about that sort of universality of intense emotions in young adulthood?
K: There are kind of a few things going on in my work when it comes to relationships. I am known for a sort of "soulmates" feel to all of my couples, whether they use the words to describe their feelings that way or not. I remember being a teenager and feeling like my crushes and relationships were the end of the world and the connections that I made with others felt like they would last forever. I have been trying to preserve that intensity, immediacy and the temporal dissonance of youth in my portrayals of teenage love. The "I would do anything for you" and the "I feel seen for the first time" of it all. The desperation, humiliation and terror of vulnerability. I feel like people understand that the experience of pain is relative. If you haven't had major injuries and tragedies, smaller things rock you deeply because you're experiencing them on a small but growing scale. But the same goes for joy and all other feelings. Romantic love included.
I must say though, as I get older, I'm excited to report that there is a new intensity that comes with age. Knowing someone for huge chunks of your life transforms them into a beautiful thing. Moving in tandem with someone for decades is so cool and looking back at the history you have with someone is exhilarating and deeply meaningful in a way that almost meets the intensity of feeling for someone for the very first time. Very "time is a flat circle", in a way that continues to delight!
G: The Corruption of Hollis Brown is one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. It feels like the reader is intruding on something they shouldn’t see. How do you conjure that much intensity into your writing? Do you have to decompress afterwards?
K: Haha not normally! I like reading intense things and engaging with deep emotions and desires, it's exhilarating. I think my chosen structure definitely helps in regard to the feeling of intensity. Almost all of my books are structured similarly: like films. It gives a slight advantage to people who read them all in one or two sittings. Slow and syrupy beginnings, a middle that feels like a jaunty walk and an ending that shifts into second gear and slams on the brakes at the exact moment when you don't need any more story to know how everything will end.
Also, the engine of my craft is moments of intimacy. A lot of other author's work is powered by conflict, but my work is powered by sensuality and moments of intensity that lead to the complexity of sensuality. So readers' brains are a bit behind their gut when it comes to plot. The focus is on the closeness and emotional development and the plot just intercedes upon that, pushing it faster or slowing it down. A visceral feeling instead of a cerebral one. I think, instead of needing to decompress, writing scenes of incredible intimacy energizes me and they are the scenes I most enjoy talking about!
G: Speaking of my favorite literature, Frankenstein is also my beloved. Adam, Mine. is brilliant. Can you tell me what it was like to write something so different from your other books? Do you have a favorite scene?
K: To be honest, it was actually wildly stressful. It was my very first historical novel so I had to approach it the way one would approach a research paper. I did a similar amount of research for this as I did for my Peter Pan book DARLING, but instead of having the luxury of being able to write a chapter-by-chapter adaptation, I opted for something significantly more distant from the original text. More thematically resonant than a strict retelling.I think my favorite scene is either the one where Victor bathes in the river in Italy and sends The Monster good feelings for the first time or the scene where The Monster meets the alchemist Willem, who is my favorite character.
G: Your author notes are wonderful. What made you want to speak directly to the readers with such compassion and understanding?
K: As an author I approach writing books for teenagers from the perspective of an educator who cannot be there in person to educate. When someone is finished reading my stories, they often have questions about the general thesis and I wanted to immediately provide answers. There are so many topics (large and small) that my books cover and I want to be very clear which ones I hope people pay the most attention to. Usually its important lessons about kindness, resilience, community and friendship and it is important to me to call attention to those topics directly.
In regards to the way my author notes are written: Some children don't have anyone in their lives who speaks to them in that way. Declaratively and with incredible unconditional love. I'll always make sure that if they pick up one of my books, that voice is there waiting for them.
G: You’ve previously spoken about how fandom and fanfiction has influenced your writing. Do you think sites like AO3 demystify the writing process for many people who may otherwise be intimidated? Do you think writing and consuming fanfiction allows people to do what they wish they were doing in their English classes?
K: I am an old participant in fandom and fandom culture and it is worthwhile to mention because it does impact my opinions on fanfiction and fan culture. By old, I mean email-lists and geocities and I was one of the first couple thousand users of AO3, and a previous user of Fanfiction.net: I think that fanfiction is an extremely fun and collaborative hobby with broad application outside of fandom spaces. I think that it's a good writing tool that you can use to learn the anatomy of longform fiction, and I think that it's a good literacy crutch for people who need personal investment before they're able to engage with reading.
I also think it's not a full replacement for engaging with traditional fiction and the writing skills it teaches do have their limitations. Largely the limitation of being unable to teach how to gently immerse someone in a brand new world and how to introduce characters to readers who know nothing about them. Even alternative universe fanfiction doesn't truly remove the reader (or a reader reading as a potential writer) from the original context. Also, with current issues regarding media literacy, having education about context within traditional fiction (as well as fanfiction) can't be thrown to the wayside. Which is something that people who intend to be writers who have cut their teeth in the fandom community just need to keep in mind while they're refining their studies and working on their debut works. But for everyone else, I don't think that matters at all, and I think they should focus on having fun and being respectful of other writers and creators in the community.
In my opinion, the benefits vastly outweigh the limitations and I think that fanfiction should be used more often in the classroom for writing exercises. Particularly considering the vast amount of jobs that essentially expect a writer to be able to write "fanfiction" eg: a spec fic script writer for TV, ghostwriters and novelization writers of large IP projects.
Stay In Touch!
Check out Adam, Mine. And the rest of Ancrum’s work in our library or through BCCLS! You can also keep up with her through Instagram, Threads, and her website.
