The August installment of Debut-to-Debut has a special place in my heart. Not only is it my own release month (!!!) but I get to feature one of the most poignant and funny novels I’ve read this year. I like to say Katie Henry’s Heretics Anonymous is a book filled with heart, humor, and heresy, which feels about right.
If you’re joining us for the first time, here’s what this series is all about: as a debut young adult author myself, (See All the Stars is coming August 14, 2018–ahhhhh that’s next week!), I found myself eager to start a conversation with a variety of authors in the debut year before, during, and after my own about their books, YA and the writing life more generally, and the experience of putting a first novel out into the world. I wanted their wisdom, and I wanted to share it with other authors, emerging writers, and readers. So each month, I chat with a fellow young adult debut novelist, and then I share our conversation with you. You can find all the interviews in the series collected right here.
I recently corresponded with Katie Henry about her debut young adult novel Heretics Anonymous (Katherine Tegen Books, August 2018).
From the jacket:
Michael is an atheist. So as he walks through the doors at St. Clare’s—a strict Catholic school—sporting a plaid tie, things can’t get much worse. His dad has just made the family move again, and Michael needs a friend. When a girl challenges their teacher in class, Michael thinks he might have found one, and a fellow nonbeliever at that. Only this girl, Lucy, is not just Catholic . . . she wants to be a priest.
But Lucy introduces Michael to other St. Clare’s outcasts, and he officially joins Heretics Anonymous, where he can be an atheist, Lucy can be an outspoken feminist, Avi can be Jewish and gay, Max can wear whatever he wants, and Eden can practice paganism. After an incident in theology class, Michael encourages the Heretics to go from secret society to rebels intent on exposing the school’s hypocrisies. When Michael takes one mission too far—putting the other Heretics at risk—he must decide whether to fight for his own freedom, or rely on faith, whatever that means, in God, his friends, or himself.
KIT FRICK: Hi, Katie! I’m so excited to chat with you about your debut novel, Heretics Anonymous. The story involves a few of my favorite things: a secret society, teens figuring out the boundaries of their world and faith and pushing against them, characters who make big mistakes and grow from them, and lots of humor. I’m curious: what was your entry point into the story? What did you set out to write about, and what arose along the way?
KATIE HENRY: I’ve been interested in theology since childhood, but struggled with whether I was a religious person for just as long. In college, through a series of happy accidents, I stumbled across a group of young, feminist Catholic women blogging about their faith and their belief in women’s ordination, liberation theology, all that good stuff. They interpreted texts I thought I knew in ways that uplifted women and LGBT people. I was just starting to transition from playwriting (my undergrad degree) to fiction, and I thought—I want a book like this. I want kids who believe and kids who don’t believe to have a window into just how complicated and nuanced faith can be.
More personally, I wrote this book in an attempt to figure out what religion meant to me. How I could be a maybe-believer in something that was alternately so beautiful and horrible. How I could fit the person I’d been born as into a space that was institutionally hostile to me. How to make change inside a religion and out of it. Whether or not I wanted to do any of that at all. That’s how it started, though it ultimately became a story that was a lot bigger than my personal faith crisis. Thank God. That would have been pretty boring.
KIT: LOL. Heretics Anonymous involves a veritable feast of Catholic history and trivia. I grew up Catholic, and I still learned a ton from reading! Tell us a bit about your research process for the book. Was this all already in your head, or did you do a deep dive into the history of Catholicism in order to write this novel?
KATIE: Sometimes, I tell people I wrote this book so that others would be forced to know the weird things I know about medieval theology. This is only kind of a joke. I didn’t receive a superlative in my high school yearbook, but it should have been Most Likely to Have Bookmarked Wikipedia’s List of Sexually Active Popes.
So, yes. I did have a lot of these facts floating around in my head already, but I did also try to go deeper than fun facts. I wanted my aspiring priest character, Lucy, to have a strong, earnest belief in both feminist and liberation theology, so I did lots of reading on those topics. I highly recommend Elizabeth A. Johnson’s Quest for the Living God. For one specific scene, I also watched an endless playlist of abstinence-only sex ed assemblies. I highly recommend not doing that.
KIT: That sounds … scarring. Tell us something about Heretics Anonymous that isn’t apparent from the book cover or flap copy. We want the inside scoop!
KATIE: From start to finish, Heretics Anonymous took about four years to write. Throughout all my countless drafts, one thing never changed, and that’s the first line: “There is something truly evil about plaid.”
KIT: I love that first line so much. What gives you the most joy about your life as a YA writer right now? What’s bringing you satisfaction at this moment in time?
KATIE: For sure, the most joyful thing about being a YA writer is all the friends I’ve made. In the two years before I got my book deal, a lot of my friends moved away from New York, where we’d all gone to college. I felt like I’d lost my people. But after getting the deal, I found myself in a debut group with the loveliest, most supportive, amazingly talented writers. Not only is it nice not to have to go through this debut experience alone, but I’ve met so many people I can’t imagine living my life without.
KIT: I feel the same! The publishing journey is unique for every author, but it’s safe to say that the road to book publication is filled with surprises, twists, and turns for all of us. What has surprised you most about the process of putting a first book into the world?
KATIE: How hard it was to let go! You’ve spent so long (years, in my case) writing and editing and tweaking this thing, to the point where it feels like it’s a cross between a vestigial organ and a pet. And then at some point, your editor’s like, “cool, once you’ve signed off on these final laid-out pages, you’re done.” I thought I’d be relieved to have it off my plate, but I sat with the completed pages for I think a week before I could bring myself to send them in. It’s like sending your kid off to college, except with fewer trips to The Container Store. It is also cheaper.
KIT: Drawing from your own unique experience, what advice would you to give to future young adult debut authors, or debut novelists in general?
KATIE: Make sure you’re still living a life outside your book. It can be so, so easy to fixate entirely on this new/exciting/terrifying experience, but do your best to maintain balance. You don’t have to be on Twitter all the time. You don’t have to have read All The Books. You don’t need to be involved in the publishing world every waking second of your life. Hanging out with your non-writing friends is important, keeping up with your non-writing hobbies is important, going outside (maybe even for fun!) is important. If you don’t have experiences unconnected from writing, what’s your next book going to be about, anyway?
KIT: So true! (Which brings us to the fraught topic of writing second books, which could be a whole other interview …) But that’s all for today; thanks so much for chatting Katie!
Katie Henry is a writer living and working in New York City. She received her BFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a published playwright, specializing in theater for young audiences. Her plays have been performed by high schools and community organizations in over thirty states. Heretics Anonymous is her first novel.
Website | Twitter | Instagram
Kit Frick is a novelist, poet, and MacDowell Colony fellow. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, she studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. When she isn’t putting complicated characters in impossible situations, Kit edits poetry and literary fiction for a small press, edits for private clients, and mentors emerging writers through Pitch Wars. Her debut young adult novel is See All the Stars (Simon & Schuster / Margaret K. McElderry Books, August 14, 2018), and her debut full-length poetry collection is A Small Rising Up in the Lungs (New American Press, fall 2018).
Heretics Anonymous is out now! Allow me to recommend your local indie, in addition to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Stop back soon for future posts in the Debut-to-Debut Interview Series. I’ll be chatting with more fantastic authors throughout the year!