From Darkness: A novel

Version 2 2024-06-03, 01:06

Version 1 2023-10-16, 03:09

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posted on 2024-06-03, 01:06 authored by Kate Hall

Set on the Australian coast, and in the classical underworld, From Darkness is a genre-bending sapphic love story about girls saving the world, and each other, from the powers of darkness.

History

Pagination

1-268

ISBN-13

9781945053986

Language

English

Notes

I was asked to speak on a panel with Dmetri Kakmi at the inaugural Port Fairy Literary Weekend in 2021, and interview fellow YA novelists Danielle Binks and Nicki Greenberg at the same festival. Selected reviews, podcasts and media for From Darkness: https://readsrainbow.com/2020/11/author-interview-kate-hazel-hall https://bookjockeyalex.com/2020/11/02/review-from-darkness-by-kate-hazel-hall/ https://frolic.media/how-redrafting-my-book-as-a-sapphic-romance-freed-me-as-an-author-by-kate-hazel-hall/

Research statement

Background As Lauren Berlant observes in Desire/Love, ‘popular romance [. . .] arranges the world around hetero-feminine experiences and desires for intimacy’ (2012, p.87). This comment neatly describes the connection between textual representations of heterosexual love, romance and desire, and the multiple points of identification and signification these invite from implied readers. In offering alternative ‘experiences and desires for intimacy’ to those depicted in YA literature more generally, YA novels featuring non-heterosexual romance are a relatively recent and progressive genre. From Darkness contributes to this by celebrating YA lesbian desire in fiction. Contribution From Darkness has been described as a 'genre-bending' novel. It blends literary prose with YA genre tropes, and its Australian setting (on Gadubanud Country/Otways) made it appealing to US publishers. The manuscript was shortlisted in Harper Voyager's international unpublished manuscript search in 2016 and sold to Interlude Press in 2020 on the basis of its 'literary merit'. The novel responds to YA literary scholar Michael Cart's call for queer texts to include 'queer consciousness/community' and does so by choosing to represent a 1990s rural Australia where homophobia does not exist. This positions the text in a select category of progressive queer YA. Significance From Darkness makes a small but significant contribution to the field of queer female YA fiction. The book's reception in the US is reflected in this review by Alex Brown of Tor.com: 'take this less as a review and more as a love letter . . . From Darkness is deeply romantic, in both senses of the word. It's moody and atmospheric yet passionate and endearing. This story broke my heart with its fraught relationships and stitched me back together again with its gorgeous words. Between From Darkness and Kathleen Jenning’s adult fantasy novella Flyaway, gothic/mythic Australian fiction is having a bit of a moment. I’m looking forward to whatever Hall does next.

Publication classification

JO3 Original Creative Works – Textual Work

Scale

NTRO Major

Recognition, awards & prizes

Forward Indies Silver Winner for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction, 2020. Winner, Debut Novel, Golden Crown Literary Awards 2020.

Publisher

Interlude Press

Place of publication

New York, N.Y.

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