We chat with author Kathleen Carr Foster about The Jewel of Corlivo, which is set in a reimagined Byzantine empire and follows a runaway courtesan and her disgraced suitor who are on the hunt for ancient treasure, but what they find will be far more troublesome . . .
Hi, Kathleen! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Sure! I’m a novelist, and I also teach first year composition at a local university. I live in the Boston area with my family and an anxious rescue dog. I love reading, playing board games and D&D, and going to the theatre!
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love stories. Some of my earliest memories are of going to the children’s room at the local library. My mom would put me and my sister in a little wagon and pull us along to the library. On the way back, we’d have to sit on the books! That’s definintely where my love of reading began. The first time I thought, I want to be a writer, was in the 8th grade. I wrote an essay about my grandmother’s dementia, and my teacher told me it made her cry. It was the moment I realized how much power a writer can have to make people feel things.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown
- The one that made you want to become an author: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engel
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Your debut novel, The Jewel of Corlivo, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Love, libraries, smash the patriarchy!
What can readers expect?
The Jewel of Corlivo is a historical fantasy set in a world inspired by the early Byzantine Empire. It follows the story of Anna, a young woman who was abandoned as a baby at the training school for courtesans in the famous mountain city of Corlivo. She’s been raised for a life in the pleasure house, and she has no illusions about her future. She’ll be a courtesan, as her mother was before she disappeared—and like her mother, gamble that her charms attract a patron rich enough to pay her debts. But when she reaches the age when her training ends and wealthy men will begin bidding for her company, she finds a letter tucked away in a neglected library. Because of that discovery, she’s able to escape the city in the company of Sebastianus, a gruff explorer who also happens to be the Emperor’s nephew.
Together they escape to the imperial court, where marvels and treachery are both commonplace. Anna’s courtesan training has hardly prepared her for the dangers of court life, let alone for delving into artifacts from the empire’s past. But when she uncovers a secret tied to her mother’s fate, Anna realizes more than her life is at stake. If she can find the courage, she might be able to improve the lives of all the women of Corlivo.
The book has the elements that I love most in a story: inclusive romance, an imaginary world, a quest through history, and a tiny little bit of the best kind of magic.
Where did the inspiration for The Jewel of Corlivo come from?
The idea for The Jewel of Corlivo came to me as I was falling asleep one night. I pictured a long table set for dinner on the terrace of a beautiful old building high in the mountains. It was sunset, and well-dressed people sat down to a candlelight meal. Most of the women were courtesans, and the guests had assembled to enjoy their sophisticated conversation as well as what might come after. Polite chatter could be heard up and down the table. However, one discussion wasn’t going as expected. After many years of attending dinners like this, the Emperor’s nephew sat down assuming he’d be bored by the young woman seated beside him. Instead, she said something completely surprising. I really wanted to find out who she was and what she said, so I started writing.
As I wrote, the story expanded from that table to the old building, and then to the city of Corlivo, and eventually to an entire empire at a moment of transition. I figured out what the young woman said, and what the Emperor’s nephew said in return, and then I realized that the conversation would become the key to finding a long-lost treasure and set something in motion that could threaten the empire and change the lives of all the other women around that table.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
One of my favorite moments in the book is the first scene I wrote: the full version of the dinner table scene I describe above. It’s when Anna and Sebastianus meet, and I love the point in the conversation when she says something that stops him in his tracks. There’s a spark between them from the very first moment. I also love the character of Klaudia, Sebastianus’s cousin. I hadn’t initially intended to write her, but she strode into the opening scene and announced herself. She’s a bold, confident queer woman who is struggling against the limits society has placed on her. Her friendship with Anna is one of my favorite relationships in the book.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
At the beginning of the novel, Anna and Sebastianus have a huge power imbalance. It was important to me to find a way to gradually rebalance the dynamic of their relationship as they got to know each other. As I wrote each scene with the two of them together, I tried to think about how they viewed one another in that moment and how their relationship had evolved to that point.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
It was long! I worked for many years on a novel that I ultimately had to shelve. It was hard to let that project go because of how much time and effort I had poured into it, but it was the right thing to do. Giving myself permission to start over with a new book, and to write something in the fantasy genre, was a huge step forward. I met my agent, Maggie Cooper, in the summer of 2023, and we worked together on some revisions to the book before going on submission in early 2024. The book went to auction later that year, and I’m so happy that Erewhon Books (Kensington) bought it. The team there has been amazing to work with.
What’s next for you?
I have a two-book contract with Erewhon, so I’m working on another stand-alone speculative novel. It’s about a young woman raising a child on her own who gets a job at an old theater in Boston, only to find herself caught up in a centuries-old Irish fairy story that is putting at risk the people she loves most in the world. The story moves from W. B. Yeats’ circle of friends in Galway in the 1890s to the vaudeville and burlesque stages of Boston in 1911 and 1943, to gritty 1995 South Boston, and finally to Tír na nÓg, the Other World of Irish legend. I’m having so much fun with the story!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I recently read The Poet Empress by Shen Tao, which I really enjoyed, as well as Katherine Arden’s The Unicorn Hunters – amazing book. I love reading non-fiction also, and I thought Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling was un-put-downable. Next on my stack to read is The Court of Venus by Bel Banta.
