For the last third of my conversation with Rita Willilams-Garcia about her historical YA novel, A Sitting in St. James (Quill Tree Books, 2021), we shifted to practical matters like revisions and time and critique groups.

Rita Willilams-Garcia discusses her historical YA novel, A Sitting in St. James (Quill Tree Books, 2021), specfically one of her themes—entitlement—and some of her other choices for the book, like the omniscient narration and the plot’s focus.

Any writer interested in history or diverse representation will find much to ponder in Rita Williams-Garcia’s glorious YA novel, A Sitting in St. James (Quill Tree Books, 2021). Rita and I discussed her characters in part 1 of our Q&A.

Michael Leali and I discuss how to address diversity, equity and inclusion in fiction.

Learning how to write more inclusively is one part of learning to write compelling fiction. We’re not born knowing how to do all of this. But we can learn it.

In Part 1 of the Q&A with Sally Pla, author of the MG novel, Stanley Will Probably Be Fine, we talked about her story’s origins and how she developed her comics trivia quest. In Part 2, we talk about how she strategically weaves in her secondary characters to make her story structure so satisfying.

After analyzing the characters and how they show up in the plot and subplots in Sally J Pla’s MG novel, Stanley Will Probably Be Fine, I had more questions. So I reached out to Sally and she generously agreed to a short interview. This Q&A is an edited version of our conversation.